


Kink Tac Toe

by greatdisorder, TheSummoningDark, ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blindfolds, Blood, Double Penetration, FaceFucking, Grad School!AU, Knifeplay, Multi, OT4, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pegging, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Rating May Change, Safewords, Sex Toys Under Clothing, Sex Worker AU, Teacher AU, alwaysagirl!Vasquez, canon era AU, escort AU, fem!Goody, frat boy!Josh, grey ace!V, mercenary au, shared bath, spidergag, trans!Faraday, trans!V, vampire!Faraday, vampire!Vasquez, werewolf!Faraday
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-09-24 17:50:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 46,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9777224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greatdisorder/pseuds/greatdisorder, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark/pseuds/TheSummoningDark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Collected fills for the Kink Tac Toe challengeRound 1: Massage (Billy/Goody), Toy Shopping (Vasquez/Goody), Shared Bath (Vasquez/Faraday)Round 2: Minor Wound Care (Billy/Faraday), Safeword (Vasquez/Faraday), DP (V/B/G/F)Round 3: Let's Negotiate (Billy/Goody), Not In The Mood (Vasquez/Faraday), Blindfold (Vasquez/Faraday)Round 4: Toy Use (Billy/Goody), Bondage (Vasquez/Faraday), Spidergag (V/B/G/F)Round 5: Polyamory (Sam/Goody), Trading Favors (Vasquez/Faraday), TBA





	1. Round 1 - Massage

**Author's Note:**

> Round one - turn one - by [thesummoningdark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark)  
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Floating in a dreamy haze of sated pleasure, it takes Goody a few long moments to understand what the gentle but insistent tugging at his wrists is trying to achieve.

He makes a half-hearted noise of protest, slowly blinking his eyes open to squint blearily at his companion; for all that he strenuously objects to being made to move, he can't help the hopelessly fond smile that spreads over his face for the sight Billy makes leaned in over him, his hair loose around his face and a flush still prettily staining his cheekbones. Goody leans up as best he can to distract him with a languid, lazy kiss which has more drowsy affection to it than any real art.

"Are we finished savoring the afterglow already?" he murmurs against Billy's lips, a teasing hint of mock reproach in the question. 

Billy rolls his eyes, fondly exasperated in that familiar way which never fails to warm Goody right down to his bones. "You don't have to move," he replies patiently. "Just let me untie you."

With some token grumbling he accedes, turning his wrists to let Billy tug the knots loose. A prickling tingle sweeps over his skin as he lets his hands fall against the sheets, blood rushing back into half-numbed flesh. He groans as he lowers his arms down to his sides, shoulders protesting the movement as they throb with the dull ache of having held the same position for too long. He hadn't thought anything of it at the time, but in hindsight the angle had been a touch awkward. He slowly flexes his fingers, coaxing some life back into them, and rolls his shoulders to ease the ache.

Billy frowns at him, curling a hand loosely around his left wrist to run a thumb over the slight indentation left behind by the rope. "I didn't realise it was on so tight," he says. Goody shrugs, and then winces at the motion; the furrow in Billy's brow deepens a fraction. "You should have said something."

"I assure you, chéri, at the time it was the last thing on my mind," Goody replies with a quick flash of a grin.

The reassurance does little to dispel the look of dissatisfaction on Billy's face, and Goody feels his smile fade a little. With a sigh he leans in for a kiss, soft and lingering, his touch gentle on Billy's skin. From experience he knows that a reminder that he doesn't mind a little pain along with his pleasure will not go down well; that's a separate issue in and of itself, and one on which they're still seeking a mutually satisfactory compromise. Most days they fall into step without a conscious thought spared for it, but in some ways that serves only to make their rare missteps all the more jarring.

Still, even those nights when a tender touch does nothing but chafe, he can't help but take some quiet delight in the care Billy takes with him. In rare moments of abandon he's still a graceful creature, precise and measured and always, always confident in his own self-control. It's a measure of security that Goody doesn't know any more that he could live without. No matter how rough they may choose to play sometimes, he's never had to doubt for a moment that it will never go too far. He trusts Billy. He trusts that should he ever need to call a halt, a single word will always be enough.

He gives a soft sigh of contentment as he melts into another lingering kiss, giving every silent promise and reassurance he can with the relaxed, trusting lines of his body. A little shudder of pleasure runs through him as Billy's capable hands knead lightly at his shoulders, teasing out the lingering ache with firm, methodical circles of his fingers.

"Better?" Billy asks, brushing a soft kiss over the side of his neck.

"Much," Goody agrees.

The unhappy edge of concern in Billy's expression has faded by the time he pulls back, replaced by something softer. The touch of his hands is gently inexorable as he nudges Goody to roll over; he goes easily with the motion, folding his arms under his head as he settles onto his stomach. The mattress shifts and creaks as Billy moves to straddle his hips. There's a strange sort of comfort in having Billy's weight pressing him into the bed, something that makes him feel anchored instead of restrained. He feels _safe_ with Billy. He always does.

A low, heartfelt groan of appreciation falls carelessly from his lips as Billy's clever hands set to work again with renewed purpose, starting at the small of his back and slowly moving upward at a torturously unhurried pace. His touch is confident, firm enough to be satisfying without ever skirting close to being too rough, and Goody can't help but go pliant under it. He hadn't realised just how much tension he'd been carrying with him until it was being patiently coaxed out of him, leaving nothing but relaxed satisfaction in its wake.

By the time Billy's thumbs are circling tenderly at the nape of his neck, he's not sure he could move if he wanted to. He feels blissed out and boneless, all heavy-limbed lassitude. A warm little smile curls on his lips as he feels Billy lean down to lay a feather-light kiss between his shoulderblades before easing off of him to settle back down onto the mattress.

He half rolls onto his side, the two of them fitting together like puzzle pieces as they curl in close. Goody reaches out to gently stroke a stray lock of Billy's hair back from his face, tucking it behind his ear and cupping a hand around his cheek as he leans in to take a slow, soft kiss.

"One of these days you're going to have to let me take care of you," he murmurs, low and wry against Billy's lips. Billy smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling with some quiet warmth that always seems so much more meaningful than any wide grin from a less reserved man.

"You do when I need it," he replies, his eyes soft as he rests his forehead against Goody's. It never fails to make him feel fortunate beyond anything he's ever deserved to be allowed to see this private side of Billy that no-one else ever does, tender and open with his walls-- not unguarded, perhaps, but with the gates left open for a rare window. He can't for the life of him work out how he earned this kind of trust. Lord knows he's never done anything in his life to _deserve_ it. But more than anything, he wants never to give Billy a reason to regret giving it to him.

Goody sighs, his smile a self-deprecating little thing as he shakes his head. "You never need it."

Billy kisses him softly, fingers threading gently through his hair. 

"You'll be there when I do."


	2. Round One - Toy shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round one - turn two - ThrillingDetectiveTales
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> Featuring alwaysalady!Vasquez (called Aleja, herein) and Goody, because I'm literally rolling dice to decide what pairing of our favorite cowboys (or cowgirls, I guess) I'm writing!
> 
> Not really edited to any measurable degree, but I hope you enjoy it!

“What about this one?”

Goody looked up from where he’d been perusing a selection of small metallic bullet vibrators in bright, gleaming jewel tones to find Aleja grinning mischievously at him from around the truly monstrous dildo that was serving as the focal point of the display. It was situated on the highest tier of this particular table, royal blue with a faint pearlescent sheen, veiny and arcing proudly up toward the ceiling. It had to be nine or ten inches long at a glance, easily with more girth to it than Aleja’s whole forearm. He snorted and arched an eyebrow at her.

“Minette, you know I am _all for_ pushing boundaries but I have to say, I think that might be a little outside of my capacity,” he assured with a fond smirk. Aleja’s grin widened, dark eyes sparkling and curls bouncing as she shook her head. She patted affectionately at the gargantuan phallus, almost as if it were some kind of pet, and sighed, overwrought and dramatic.

“All of my dreams,” she said mournfully, “shattered.”

“Somehow I think you’ll survive,” Goody observed drily, circling the table to come up behind her. He slipped his arms around her waist and hooked his chin over her shoulder, though he had to lean up onto his toes a little to make it work. Aleja sank sweetly back against him with a small, pleased noise, both of her hands curling tenderly over Goody’s arms where they were slung low across her hips. He pressed a kiss against her cheek, thrilling with tender pleasure at the way that she turned her face into it. “Now, would you care to peruse a selection of more reasonable dildoes, or would you prefer to start with harnesses?”

She hummed thoughtfully, swaying back and forth the barest bit as she weighed her options.

If Goody was being honest, he had to admit that he was a bit surprised that Aleja had gone for it at all. Though she was certainly adventurous, in the bedroom and beyond, and had known Goody more than long enough to have met a handful of his exes - the roster of which trended toward men - there was a difference between knowing cerebrally that your boyfriend liked to be fucked and being willing to don a dick and take a run at the task yourself. He’d dated a handful of women, some who identified similarly to the way he did and others who exclusively dated men, and while all of them had been comfortable with Goody’s sexuality, Aleja was the first who had jumped quite so enthusiastically at the thought of getting Goody spread out underneath her and fucking him until he couldn't remember his own name - her words, not that Goody was complaining.

He wasn't quite sure how it had even come up in conversation, to tell the truth. Aleja was his best friend in many ways, and there wasn't a topic they had stumbled upon yet that had proven to be off-limits. They’d talked about sex any number of times, as a matter of sharing confidence before tripping into this thing they had together, and after, to better learn the topography of the few intimate areas where their knowledge of one another hadn’t yet become expert. He couldn't recall if she had prodded gently at this particular door and he had opened it willingly, or if he had issued an invitation that beckoned her through. All he knew for certain was that she had turned her soft, dark eyes on him when they were lying together one evening, dropped a tender kiss to his mouth, and asked gently into the shadows of twilight if he missed it.

There’d been a joke on the tip of his tongue, a flippant remark to assuage her concerns and reassure her that she was more than meeting all of his needs, like he had used a number of times with paramours past, but Goody had bitten it back before it saw the open air. Aleja had been studying him so seriously, so sweetly, with that tiny furrow between her eyes that belied the magnitude of her concern, and Goody hadn't had it in him to offer her anything but honesty.

“It’s something I like,” he’d assured, huffing a laugh when she quirked a little, knowing smirk and amending, “a lot.” He hesitated for a moment, brushing an errant curl off of her forehead and dragging his thumb along the elegant curve of her cheek. “But, chérie, don't mistake that for a second for my feeling as if there’s anything lacking in what we have.”

Aleja had rolled her eyes and murmured, “Obviously,” when he leaned in to kiss her, as if she hadn't a worry about it in mind, but she’d melted beautifully under his ministrations, a thin frisson of tension he hadn't even noticed sloughing off and away under the warmth of his hands.

He cupped her face in his palms, kissing her slow and deep and tender until his lips tingled with it, until she moaned and sighed and twisted to be nearer, pressing up into him while he swallowed down the tiny, needy sounds she made like they were some ambrosial delight. When he pulled back some time later, barely enough space between them for a breath to slip through, she blinked at him with hooded, hazy eyes and bit at her luscious, swollen mouth.

She was beautiful, and Goody’s chest tightened painfully at the sight of her, sweet and aching and so full of love that he spilled the offer into the air before he could catch it behind his teeth.

“You could, if you wanted,” he said, hoarse with want and feeling half-drugged for the nearness of the exquisite creature beneath him, gazing up at him from her halo of mussed curls with sparks alighting in her dark eyes. “Fuck me.” He swallowed, thick, licked his lips and ducked his head to mask the slight, embarrassed heat that flushed his face. “It’s only an idea, but - ”

_“Yes.”_

When Goody glanced up at Aleja, she looked just as startled as he felt, eyes gone slightly wider with surprise, mouth soft. Her fingers tightened sweetly where they were curved over Goody’s hips, and she took a small, careful breath. Her pupils were big and dark, desire swallowing up the soft glow of her eyes, and a lovely, wanting blush had bloomed across her cheeks.

“Yes,” she said again, slow and deliberate, voice low and sweet like molten sugar. “Yes, I want to fuck you.”

And, well, here they were, together in a shockingly tasteful sex shop, on the hunt for precisely the accessories to change that idea into a reality.  
  
“I think, harness first,” Aleja said decisively, twisting in Goody’s grip to grin and dart in for a quick kiss. “Get the boring part out of the way so we can spend more time picking out the fun stuff.”  
  
She wagged her eyebrows again, exaggerated and comical, and Goody bit back a laugh.  
  
“I’m fairly certain that everything in here is ‘the fun stuff,’ my dear,” he observed with a fond smirk, giving her hand a squeeze as she stepped out of the circle of his arms. She tangled their fingers together, tugging Goody after her as she crossed the shop to where an array of plaster mannequins, cast in the shape of the sinuous curve that arced from waist to upper thigh, were modeling a selection of harnesses in different styles and materials.

“So,” she said determinedly, shoulders straight like a general preparing to address their regiment, “what do we need?”

“I, uh,” Goody started, giving her hand a little squeeze. “I admit I’m not entirely sure.”

Aleja looked over at him, smirking a little too wide in the way she did when she wanted to laugh but didn't think it would be appropriate.

“Well,” she drawled, knocking her hip against Goody's and squeezing his hand in return, “it seems we have arrived at a road block.” She turned to glance around the shop - moderately sized, with a handful of employees milling about, one behind the register and another two stocking a wall opposite the display of harnesses. “Should we ask someone?”

“It is what they're here for,” Goody said agreeably, twisting to follow the line of her gaze. The weight of their attention must have been heftier than they’d expected, because it only took a second or two of staring consideringly at the duo thoughtfully arranging a selection of restraints for one of them to look up.

He was a tall, good-looking man, probably of an age with Goody and Aleja, with dark, sleepy eyes, a sleek, short flat top, and a warm, friendly grin. He clapped the young woman - petite and freckled with a thick rope of dark red hair coiling down her back - on the shoulder and came bounding across the shop like a Labrador. When he drew up close enough, Goody saw that the name-tag pinned to his lapel read ‘Brody’ in large, cheerful block letters with a scrawled message underneath that said ‘Ask me about knotwork!’

“Hey!” he said affably, giving a little wave. “Can I help you two find anything?”

“We’re looking for harnesses,” Aleja provided easily. “We could use some guidance.”

“Strap-ons, righteous!” Brody said enthusiastically. He stepped carefully around them and turned so that his back was to the mannequins. “First things first, let’s talk experience level. Is this a first time foray for you, or is it something you’ve played with before?”

“Never,” Aleja provided with a shake of her head.

Brody glanced over at Goody, and he lifted a shoulder in a small, noncommittal shrug.

“All of my experience is limited to the real thing, I’m afraid,” he said. Brody nodded.

“Cool.” He considered something for a moment and then held both of his hands up, palms open but tilted down, gesturing in the air as he continued, “Okay, so, I’m more of a restraints and BDSM guy, but my girl Emma over there is the pegging queen.” He raised a hand to point behind them, presumably at the redhead he’d left on the other side of the shop. “She’ll be able to answer any question you have, and she has a tremendous amount of personal experience to draw from, which is always better than just product knowledge. I’m gonna send her over to you, so just tight for a second, chill?”

“Chill,” Aleja assured, nodding seriously. Goody bit back a laugh and ducked his head in a nod when Brody turned to look at him for confirmation.

“Boss,” Brody said cheerfully, flashing another broad, bright smile and bounding back the way he’d come.

“He was certainly enthusiastic,” Goody observed. Aleja snorted and rolled her eyes at him.

“Better that than the alternative,” she murmured. She tucked a stray lock behind her ear, glancing down at the floor and running her thumb across Goody’s knuckles. “I want this to be good for you,” she said quietly. “For both of us.”

Goody sighed softly through his nose, that sweet, pleasant ache humming to life behind his sternum. He lifted Aleja’s hand up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her wrist, just over the drum of her pulse, and another to her fingers where they were entwined with his.

“It will be,” he assured, and the smile she bestowed on him was a sliver of a sunbeam, warm and gentle and painful to look at too long.

Emma, it turned out, though not as comically enthused as her counterpart, was indeed something of an expert when it came to the art of the strap-on. She talked them through materials and cleaning methods, through cuts and fits, through attachments and color options. It seemed like she and her husband - “And our boyfriend,” she added, a small, conspiratorial quirk at the corner of her mouth - had tried everything on the wall at least once, twice if they liked it.

“Only a few of them made it to regular rotation, but it was a hell of a time even so,” she confided with a wink, and retreated back to the far wall to afford them a measure of privacy to make their final selections.

When all was said and done, they walked out of the store with a bag full of options - they were hardly strapped for cash, and both optimistic about the outcome of this particular experiment. As she climbed into the passenger seat, bag tucked into the footwell behind her, Aleja turned to grin at Goody, eyes bright and dancing.

“Are you excited?” she asked, biting nervously at her lip. Goody smiled at her and leaned across the center console to capture a kiss, sliding his fingers into her hair for a few blissful seconds.

“With you, chérie,” he promised, gentle against her mouth, “always.”

Aleja flushed sweetly, grin going broad and brilliant for a split second before she darted in to steal another quick kiss, biting just so and licking filthily past Goody’s teeth when he gasped.

“Drive fast,” she ordered, voice low and dark with promise. Goody settled back in the driver’s seat with no small amount of difficulty, heat climbing up his spine, and reached dazedly for the gearshift.  
  
“Yes ma’am,” he agreed breathlessly, and dropped his foot to the gas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brody is my sweet frat boy OC son and I'm sorry inflicted him on you all except really I'm not sorry at all.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading darlings!! There will be more to come~
> 
> <333


	3. Round One - Shared Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round one - turn three - greatdisorder
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> This one might have gotten a little bit away from me. If you're looking for steamy smut, I'm sorry to have to disappoint you because this is mostly sickening fluff. But if you're patient, maybe my next fill be more up your filthy alley.
> 
> Anyway welcome to a teacher AU where Vasquez has been renamed Alejo, which is definitely at least half Thrilling's fault, and a peek into some of my favorite relationship kink "langauge" so to speak of putting your partner's care in front of your own sexual needs.
> 
> Enjoy~

It's a slow, hazy climb towards consciousness, Josh's head pounding faintly in a warning at what's to come and something tickling his nose from where he's wedged his face in a pitiful attempt to protect himself from the late morning sunlight filtering in through the blinds, and the first thought that floats to the surface of his otherwise fuzzy mind is _midterms win again_.

He reluctantly cracks an eye, just enough to barely be considered open, and he's immediately greeted by a mess of dark curls that solve both the mystery of the increasingly persistent urge to sneeze, one he might give into if he wasn't worried about what any sudden movement involving his head would do, and the kind of muddy memory problems involving where exactly he's woken up after a night out only a handle of bottom shelf booze could leave behind.

Of course it's Ale that he'd be sprawled out across, one leg slung almost possessively over the other man's hips and his face mashed gracelessly up against the elegant curve of Ale's neck. It's probably a small favor that he's out like a light. Maybe he won't notice the little bit of drool Josh definitely leaves behind when he slowly unsticks his face from the throat it's attached to and squints against the light filling up the room.

For someone who can pack away liquor like it's going out of style, it's rare that Josh can ever scrape through to the next morning without a hangover that makes him feel like Satan himself has come up directly from hell to personally remove his soul from his body. A smarter, more responsible person with half an ounce of self-preservation might take that as enough of a reason to dial it back. Any sane person would when the only thing waiting for them the next day is likely to be twenty-four hours of getting miserably and intimately acquainted with the nearest toilet. 

Josh, however, decided a long time ago that he was either going to go out in a blaze of drunk glory or survive enough to regret all of his decisions after. So far, and against all reason, that hasn't worked out so bad for him.

Especially, he thinks, his gaze wandering lazily over the man next to him as he tries to swallow the taste of god-only-knows-what out of the back of his mouth, when he doesn't come out on the other side of the bottle so worse for wear.

Christ, but Ale really is unfairly gorgeous, even snoring softly with his hair doing its best impression of a deranged cockatoo, and for a man with a body any self-respecting bodice ripper would probably call 'godlike' -- not that Josh would know anything about that -- it's an actual fucking travesty that he seems to have the unhealthiest obsession with sweater vests Josh has ever seen in his life. If not for the way they happen to cling to the trim line of his waist and Ale's personal preference of keeping his sleeves rolled neatly up over his strong forearms, the whole thing would probably be unsalvageable.

Or so he makes a point to tell Ale whenever he's not in a position to tear the stupid things off himself. In any case, Josh prefers him like this, stripped down and relaxed with warm lines of sunlight cutting golden stripes across his skin, and he'd be downright stupid not to take a moment or two to show his appreciation for the good luck of getting to wake up next to him the best way he knows how.

He has vague flickers of last night, mostly made up of the two of them banging clumsily in through the door trying to devour each other whole. There are a few things he remembers with startling clarity, though, Ale's deep rumble of a laugh and little teases in Spanish being murmured against his jaw as they stripped each other down, drunk and eager and maybe a little desperate, and after that--

...Well. There's maybe small chance that Josh, not for the first time, might have passed out with his hand still wrapped around Ale's dick.

But he's happy to make up for that now, nuzzling a lazy path of kisses down Ale's chest, nipping at the lean lines of his flank and laying his teeth none-too-gently over the cut of his hipbone as Josh settles between his thighs. To his surprise, Ale barely stirs. Not much besides the soft, sleepy murmur Josh would be hard pressed to suss out the meaning of, riding on a soft sigh that curls something warm and sweet just behind his breastbone, and Josh wouldn't be able to help the little cut of a grin on his mouth as he looks up at the man above him even if he wanted to. 

Of the two of them, Ale's always been the lighter sleeper. If that's because he really doesn't sleep as deeply or if he just happens to stay too sober most days to otherwise master the art of whiskey-soaked comas, the world may never know. Regardless, neither of them have ever been opposed to waking up to the gift of morning sex before, least of all Ale when his interest in Josh's mouth around his dick is only rivaled by Josh's interest in greedily swallowing it down, and right now he has every intention of making the most of the chance.

Josh takes his time nosing little teases up the inside of Ale's thigh, hot flickers of want already blooming bright in the pit of Josh's stomach for the warmth of his skin and the heady smell of him, and he doesn't bother to swallow back the soft noise of approval pulled out of the back of his throat as he mouths lazily around the base of Ale's cock. 

He hears Ale's breath catch, shifting under Josh with a tiny twitch of his hips and a shiver shaking through him that Josh can feel everywhere they're pressed skin to skin as he coaxes him to hardness with teasing strokes of his fingers and hot, languid passes of his mouth like he has all the time in the world to drive Ale insane. 

Ale mumbles something, soft and intelligible around a groan, and Josh hums an answer right around the same time he wraps his lips around the head of Ale's dick, sucking gently as he teases up behind Ale's balls with his fingers just the way Josh knows he likes best. He earns a hard shudder for it, Ale's fingers sliding through his bed-wrecked hair and his scalp already prickling in the sense memory anticipation of Ale curling his fingers in to fuck up into Josh's mouth. Need unspools hot and desperate in his stomach for it, leaving him moaning around Ale as he swallows him a little deeper.

"Guero." Ale's voice is deep and thick and ragged around the edges and Josh curls in a little closer for it, working his way down the cock pressed up against his tongue slow and steady. Ale's fingers tighten in his hair a little more, his voice a low warning that sends searing sparks crackling down Josh's spine, " _Josh_."

He's expecting a lot of things to come next, or at least just one thing in the form of Ale holding him just where he wants him and using Josh's mouth the way they both like. He's banking on it, actually, because he's already hard as a rock and just shameless enough not to give a shit about the mess he's likely to make rocking his hips up against the sheets underneath him while Ale fucks his throat.

What he's not expecting, however, is Ale to fist his hair just on the wrong side of too much and yank his head clean off the dick Josh was enjoying very much until a second ago.

Josh's yelp is startled out of him, drowning out the pitiful groan Ale makes as pain rakes across the top of his head, and he yanks his head free of Ale's grip with a snarled, "What the _fuck_?"

When he looks up, Ale is bleary and pale and breathing hard through his nose in a way that Josh has been intimately, intimately acquainted with during some of his worse hangovers when he was trying not to lose whatever pitiful remains were still left in his stomach. "If you keep going," Ale starts with all the careful measure of a man trying not to dry heave, "I will throw up." 

A better man than Josh would feel at least a little sympathy. 

But Josh has never claimed to be anything but an asshole and there's a certain amount of satisfaction he definitely takes in the noise Ale makes, more suited to a small animal being stepped on than a full grown man, when he sinks his teeth into the meat of Ale's thigh in retaliation for yanking out some of his hair. 

"Why darlin'," he says, sarcasm dripping off every word as he nuzzles over the red indentation he left behind. There'll be a bruise there later and Josh still won't be sorry when he sees it next. Though, to be fair, he doubts Ale will either. "That's the sweetest thing you've ever said with your dick in my throat."

Ale only groans, soft and pitiful. It's the sound of defeat if Josh has ever heard one.

Josh considers him for a long moment, chin propped up on Ale's hip, before sighing and letting the scruff of his cheek drag affectionately over the other man's skin. "What kind of Mexican can't stomach tequila? You should be ashamed of yourself."

Ale peaks out from under the arm slung over his eyes just enough to shoot Josh a glare that only makes his grin widen. "I don't know what that was last night but it was _not_ tequila."

"What, is off brand shit too rough for your delicate palette?"

"The label was handwritten."

"Now you're just splittin' hairs."

Ale shoves at his face with a frustrated noise and Josh only laughs, snapping playfully at his fingers before rolling off the bed to his feet. He's not one hundred percent, not in any sense of the word, but he's miles above the miserable lump in bed trying to drag a tangle of blankets over his head and as far as he's concerned, it's a win if there ever was one.

Ale's bathroom isn't much to write home about, small and a little cramped as it is. But it's neat and clean and in better shape than the ones in most places Josh has ever lived in, which probably says more about his standards than he really wants to analyze too closely. He's considering just taking a fast shower and taking care of himself quick and dirty style while he’s at it but--

He eyes the tub and a better idea starts to form.

It only takes a few minutes to get the taps going at the right temperature and set the tub to filling before he's padding back into the bedroom to where the miserable lump otherwise known as Ale is doing what Josh can only assume is his level best to roll over and die.

"C'mon sleeping beauty," he says, grinning too wide and not all together kind as he yanks the blankets off his pathetic excuse for a boyfriend. "Rise and shine."

Josh's Spanish these days is pretty limited to the different ways he's learned to ask Ale to fuck him but even if he couldn't make an exact translation he feels confident that the words spilling out of Ale are vicious and rude enough that his own mother would probably make him swallow a whole bottle of dish soap if she heard him now.

"Is that anyway to talk to someone takin' care of you, sweetheart?" The look Ale gives him could ice over hell and Josh's grin only hitches wider for it.

"Tienes suerte que estás guapo, guero." 

"I _am_ mighty handsome, aren't I? Kind of you to notice."

"Debería he dejado mi verga en tu boca." 

"I know at least one of those words. Come on, now." Josh reaches out to take one of Ale's hands and give it a yank. "Get your lazy ass up before I have to get a mop."

Ale, to his credit, allows himself to be dragged out of bed and ushered into the bathroom with only a token amount of grumbling. His eyebrows raise when he sees the tub, not anywhere close to full yet but with steam curling promisingly off the water already gathered, before he cuts a ghost of a grin at Josh.

"Can't handle a bath on your own any more, cariño?"

"Shut up and get in."

It's not a bath built for two. Certainly not for two people as big as either of them, Ale making up for what he lacks in Josh's breadth with height, but with some maneuvering and only a little bit of swearing, they make it work.

It's worth getting his knees pinned awkwardly up against the side of the tub, Josh thinks, for the way Ale settles between them and melts in against his chest. It's a tight fit but it's...nice in a way that took Josh a while to understand enough to appreciate, savoring the way Ale tips his head back against Josh's shoulder and the sound of the hot water filling up around them. It's not a real hangover cure but he doesn't think Ale really cares when it means he gets to be draped over Josh like this, front and center of his attention.

"Need some help with something, guerito?" Ale asks, shifting back against Josh's half-hard dick caught between them, and Josh can hear the smirk in his voice even if he can't see it on his face.

Josh splashes some water up in retaliation, laughing when Ale splutters for it. "Picturing Horne in his underwear can only do so much for a man."

"Maybe that's the reason it's still looking for attention."

Josh shudders theatrically and adds in a gag for good measure. "I should drown you for an accusation like that."

Ale only laughs, that deep gravelly chuckle that winding up through Josh like smoke and filling up every inch of him, and settles in a little more comfortably back against Josh. "You wouldn't. You like me."

"Says you."

"Mm. Says _you_."

Josh stretches out one of his legs to toe off the tap before the tub overfills, curling it over one of Ale's on the way back into the water and hooking it up under his calf. "You can't prove nothin'."

"You say so in your sleep. 'Oh Alejito, I can't live without you.' All the time."

It startles a loud bark of a laugh out of Josh, bright and genuinely delighted. "You bold faced liar. You know my mouth doesn't make that sound."

Ale hums back his answer around a sigh as Josh gently pour palmfuls of hot water over his skin, relaxing against him even more as Josh's fingers stroke soothingly down his chest. "I could fix that."

Josh rests his head against his head against Ale's head with a soft snort. "You already get my mouth to do everything it's made for."

"Even old dogs can learn a trick or two."

The silence hangs between them for a few heartbeats, long enough that Ale rolls his head to crack an eye up at Josh, and what he sees is enough to have a grin breaking wide open across his face. " _Old_." Josh says, like it's just about one of the most offensive things he's ever heard. "I am not _old_."

Ale's grin is as beautiful as he is, the bastard, and Josh wants to wipe it right off the asshole's face. Preferably with his own face, which is exactly what he tries to do even if the angle is all wrong when he slots his mouth over Ale's. The kiss is a tender, gentle thing even if Josh can't help bite a little and he kisses Ale until he's making the sweetest sounds against Josh's mouth, quiet and pleased and pliant against him.

It almost hurts to look him after it breaks. Ale has these wonderful, deep eyes and they have the worst habit of going soft and doe-y when he's really happy and it hits Josh somewhere vulnerable right in the chest that he didn't even know existed up until a few months ago. "See, bonito?" He murmurs and the rasp to it sends shivers up Josh's spine. "One trick already down."

"I'm definitely going to fuckin' drown you." Ale's laugh warms him right down to his very core, making him feel light and breathless, and he goes in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a couple translations~
> 
> 1\. "Tienes suerte que estás guapo, guero." - You're lucky you're pretty, guero.
> 
> 2\. "Debería he dejado mi verga en tu boca." - I should have left my dick in your mouth.
> 
> I'm not a native speaker in any sense of the word and I want to give **Thrilling** mad fucking props for helping me out with both of these. If any of you lovely readers see anything that needs a fix, please let me know.
> 
>  **TheSummoningDark** also deserves at least a shot of something lethally strong for having to listen to me hem and haw about not thinking I'll be finished on time with this for the last week.


	4. Round 2 - Minor Wound Care

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round two - turn one - by [thesummoningdark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark)  
> 
> 
>   
>    
> 
> 
> **content warnings:** knifeplay, blood

After the first time, Billy goes out and buys a new set of knives.

What he's looking for isn't in his usual dealer's repertoire, really; he ends up browsing through a few different selections on word of mouth recommendation before settling on something he likes. Generally he doesn't give much thought to aesthetic considerations when he's choosing a new set of blades, beyond making sure to always have at least one set with a duller, matte finish which won't draw the eye by glinting in the light. There's always a bleak kind of beauty in a well-made knife, but form follows function. He never sets out to choose a set of knives on their aesthetic merits.

If he were ever to make an exception, though, now seems like the right time to do it. It feels appropriate when there's something almost ceremonial in the way they're to be used. He wouldn't be looking for a new set if it wasn't...important to him, in so many small but significant ways, to keep this particular set distinct from the knives he carries into the field with him. If questioned he could easily give a plausible answer about there never being any such thing as too much caution when it comes to blood-borne diseases, and it would be true, for what it was worth. But it wouldn't be the truth.

He doesn't want to take the same knives he's killed with to someone he's come to care about.

Nothing about this has gone how he might have expected it to. His first impression of Faraday had been, not to overstate it, catastrophically negative. He hadn't known at first whether to classify Faraday as a liability or an asset, much less anything like a real ally. He never would have thought he'd be given a reason to give a shit about the capricious, volatile creature he'd met that day, and honestly considered killing for more than an impulsive heartbeat. He certainly hadn't given even a passing thought to the possibility of falling into bed with him.

But for all it came out of left field, the way they'd come together that first night had made sense to him. They were clashing hard, angry and hurting, and with the trajectory they were on it was that or kill each other. It was nothing, as a rough fuck that's a hair away from a fight when nothing seems to matter much because they're going to die come morning anyway, some brief distraction from being hurt and angry and staring their own mortality in the face. He hadn't expected it to mean a damn thing beyond spending his last night on earth with the wrong person. He hadn't expected them to survive to long enough for there to be any fallout to deal with.

Except somehow they live. Somehow after he loses consciousness in a pool of his own blood and the grim certainty of never waking, instead he comes to in a hospital, with two men he'd never expected to have to look in the eye figure out where he stands with in beds on either side of him. They heal and they get back in the game, and slowly their thrown-together ragtag band becomes an actual team, a solid unit that functions like a well oiled machine. Admittedly a machine that encompasses some complex and incestuous sexual dynamics, but they make it work. _Mercenary_ isn't a job with long-term prospects, and they've all learned to be pragmatic about taking their stress relief where they can get it.

Honestly, if questioned he'd have to admit to being a little surprised by how well it works for them. On the surface it seems like it shouldn't. But they're used to trusting each other in the heat of battle when their lives are on the line, when one moment of carelessness or miscommunication could get them hurt or killed. Maybe this isn't so very different. They know how to sketch out a plan and make sure that everyone's on board and understands their role, that they have a system in place for keeping their heads and figuring it out if something goes wrong on them in the heat of the moment. It's the other side of the coin, comfort and pleasure instead of death and pain, but it's not so very different. In the end both boil down to something intense and potentially dangerous that could go bad on them very easily. They know how to trust each other with that.

Perhaps that's why he finds it so easy to agree the first time Faraday puts voice to the thoughts behind the way his eyes glint sometimes for the sight of a knife in Billy's hands.

He's cautious at first, taking it slow and methodical after making Faraday swear up and down that he'll tell him to stop if it tips over into the wrong kind of too much. He starts with shallow nicks, occasionally cutting deep enough to draw a trickle of blood as he carefully watches Faraday for a reaction, and it would be almost eerily like the prelude to torturing someone if he weren't soothing the cuts with his tongue and lapping up any stray drops of blood. Faraday whines and shakes for it, greedy and desperate, more often than not coming untouched. Things are always odd and tense immediately afterward, but they can all see clear as day that Faraday's getting something he needs out of it.

Perhaps he should be uncomfortable with this, with the fact that it's so easy for him to take a knife to someone he cares about and draw blood just because they've asked him to. He isn't. But sometimes he's a little uneasy about the fact that he isn't.

It's a wildcard thrown in, but they find their balance again, as they always do. Goody talks to him about it. He talks to V about it. He _tries_ to talk to Faraday about it, which goes as well as trying to talk to Faraday about things he doesn't want to talk about usually go. Billy, patient as the tide, lets it go. They've never been much for talking it out, the two of them. For his part he's long in the habit of not wasting words, more inclined to keep quiet and watch and listen than to draw attention by opening his mouth unnecessarily. And while Faraday definitely does not share that philosophy, the things which he runs his mouth about are usually inconsequential. It's a very different proposition to fit words around something important, to find the right way to explain the tangled mess of feelings that come with something like this.

So instead it becomes something that sneaks up on them, dormant for long stretches as the pressure builds up like a volcano waiting to erupt; the tension slowly ratcheting up in Faraday one notch at a time until he's stretched taut and ready to snap. And snap he does, at anything with the misfortune to cross his path when he's in the wrong mood, until something clicks and they collide again.

It's always rough when they come together. He's never known how to gentle the restless, reckless energy in Faraday in quite the same way V does; most of the time he doesn't particularly want to, appreciating the combative edge to their dynamic that he's not likely to get anywhere else. He loves Goody with everything in him, loves the nights they spend fucking slow and easy, but...well. They wouldn't have ended up in this arrangement in the first place if they couldn't see the advantages in having multiple people to get what they want and need from.

It's always rough when they come together, but this particular facet of their relationship - blood and blades out on the very edges of the ground they're willing to tread together - it isn't something that's done quick and dirty. It's a matter both of preference and necessity to take it slowly. They like to push their limits with each other, but has no intention of actually hurting Faraday in any way he can't take back; not through carelessness any more than malice. His knives are always kept clean and sharp, the cuts he makes always carefully gauged to be deep enough to draw blood but shallow enough to avoid any permanent scarring.

He doesn't really understand what it is that Faraday gets out of this. For his part, the mere thought of letting someone take a blade to him is enough to make his skin crawl. He's never dealt particularly well with being vulnerable, and although he sees the evidence damn near every night of how pleasurable it can be for some people, he just can't picture himself enjoying being in that position. But he can accept that just because he wouldn't enjoy something doesn't mean that it can't be good for someone else. The deeper they go trip down this particular rabbithole, the more obvious it becomes that this is something Faraday needs. And for better or for worse, it's something Billy can give him that no-one else can. If by drawing blood now and then - done with care in a safe place - he's helping sate some self-destructive instinct that might vent itself in uglier ways otherwise, how can he refuse?

In the quiet spaces in between, he can't help but harbour doubts about it. But in the moment they always melt away before the heat that shudders through him for the noise torn from Faraday's throat for the first cut, before the soft incredulity he always feels for just how much trust he's being given; here with a knife in his hand and Faraday's head tipped back to bare his throat. He doesn't know how he earned this kind of trust, but he knows that it's important to him to make sure that he's taking care with it. Trust is a rare and precious commodity in their world.

With the tip of the knife he traces out a light, teasing pattern over Faraday's stomach, making another tiny nick of a cut at the base of his ribcage and lapping lazily at that one too. The way his muscles jump under the skin for it is delicious, nearly as addictive as the desperate noises he makes. The next cut he makes, to the centre of Faraday's chest this time, is deeper; still carefully gauged not to be deep enough to scar, but deep enough to draw a trickle of blood. He watches the blood flow and pool for a long moment before leaning in to lick it from the skin, slow and deliberate, leaving fresh blood bright and coppery on his lips.

He's nothing if not methodical. There's a rhythm to this that's by now almost comfortable in its familiarity, a rise and fall like waves of having Faraday arching up with short, sharp cuts before melting him back into the mattress again with languorous passes of his tongue. His senses are filled with the taste and scent of blood, thick and metallic on his tongue, as he slowly works his way down the other man's body. The shudders and moans he draws out are addictive, intoxicating, and it's so very easy to forget any quiet misgivings he may harbour when they're drowned out by such obvious pleasure.

He can't help but map out vulnerable points as he charts a steady path downward. Carotid artery, subclavian, aortic, iliac, the vulnerable hollow spaces between ribs where a sharp knife could slide through to plunge into heart or lungs; it's pure animal instinct, honed by long years of combat experience, impossible to turn off. With a flick of the wrist he could have Faraday gasping his last and bleeding out against the sheets and they both know it. It might never stop being stunning to him how much trust Faraday is willing to give him.

No matter how slow and careful he takes it, this is always a messy process. By the time he's sealing his mouth over the first cut made with some care to the soft flesh of Faraday's inner thigh, there's blood on his lips and dripped down his chin into the scruff of facial hair there, smeared by contact across his palms and his chest. He's breathing hard, pupils blown dark and a flush burning across his skin as he digs his teeth in and sucks over the cut, leaving behind a livid mark blossomed out around it like some bloodied flower, all vibrant reds and purples against pale skin. There's another level of intimacy here almost more innocent than the kiss of cold steel against yielding flesh, his head bowed low between Faraday's spread thighs and mouth hot against tender skin. But for the smeared blood it might almost be normal.

Afterwards, he cleans the blood from the knife.

There's a practised efficiency to the routine as he carefully dries off the blade before wiping it down with disinfectant; he inspects the mottled metal as he goes, checking for nicks or scratches, or the first hints of rust. Later, he'll sharpen and polish it. For now he returns it to its slot alongside the rest of the set, in the case sitting open on the counter by the sink. Even with the knife cleaned off, his own reflection in the mirror above the sink is ghoulish, some blood-splattered horror movie nightmare. He considers it for a long moment before sighing softly and reaching to run the hot water. The water is quickly stained a murky red, rust coloured flecks swirling down the drain and steam curling in the air as he washes the tacky half-dried blood from his skin. Hair clinging to damp skin, he shuts off the water, picks up the medkit from the shelf, and heads back through to the bedroom.

Faraday hasn't moved in the meantime. If Billy didn't know better he'd think Faraday was drugged, sprawled out loose and boneless against the ruined sheets, his eyes dark and hazy. The blood painted over his skin is fading to a duller colour as it dries, rust-red to match the metallic scent of it hanging heavily in the air. He blinks slowly as the mattress shifts with the weight of Billy sitting down on it again, gaze taking a long moment to focus on the medkit. A hint of a scowl creases his brow.

"M'fine," he mutters sullenly, making a token attempt to push the kit away with a clumsy hand.

"We have a deal," Billy says quietly.

It hangs in the air between them for a long moment, the silence broken only by the _click_ of Billy unfastening the clasps, loud in the stillness of the room. Eventually Faraday huffs a disgruntled breath of a sigh and relaxes back against the mattress again.

"Fine."

That's apparently as much encouragement as he's willing to give. But despite everything, he leans into the touch a little as Billy methodically cleans the blood from his skin. Antiseptic for the cuts, bandaids for the few deep enough to still have fresh blood beading on them; there's a ritual to this too, done with every bit as much care and purpose as what had come before. Maybe it's not the healthiest arrangement they have here. But for its flaws, it works. This is something Faraday needs, and for better or for worse, it's something Billy can give. It's something he's _willing_ to give, so long as he's allowed to take care with it and make sure it's done right.

When he's satisfied, he sets the medkit aside and leans back against the headboard, reaching for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. There's a comforting familiarity in the flare of the lighter and the acrid taste of smoke. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, the cigarette loose between his fingers as he slowly exhales.

Faraday's shoulder nudges gently up against his hip, and deep inside, some uneasy part of him relaxes.


	5. Round Two - Safeword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round two - turn two - ThrillingDetectiveTales
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Friendly reminder that safewords don't have to be literal safewords! They can be a three-color system or a 'stop' or a 'wait' or an 'I'm not sure,' and you - yes you! - deserve a partner who's paying attention and cares enough about your well-being to stop and ask if something seems off even without words! /steps down off soapbox and hands out condoms
> 
> Big thanks to both of my co-authors/game opponents for cheerleading instead of shit-talking when I put this off until the last minute because I had family in town. <3
> 
>  **Content warnings:** Vasquez (Alejo, herein) experiences an extreme emotional reaction during sex that is not unlike a panic attack although all sexual contact is 100% consensual.

It's part of Josh's standard operating procedure to explain and implement a three-color system with every new client he takes on - his days of taking stupid risks with rich strangers are long behind him, by now - so when he rolls his hips forward and sinks back into the hot, tight clench of Alejo underneath him, it's an automatic reaction to the little, gut-punched sob the motion earns him to ask, "Color?"  
  
He knows that Alejo understands what he means by that question. He'd been familiar with the light system, as he'd called it, when Josh first brought it up, and this is hardly the first time that Josh has checked in with him since their evening began.  
  
He usually has a hardline policy about stopping at the first sign of tears, but when he'd finally sunk home who knows how long ago there had already been a wet glimmer at the edge of Alejo's long lashes, curving down across his cheek while he let out a breath that sounded like it might shatter in the open air. Josh had asked for his color then, and while the way that Alejo trembled under his hands hadn't exactly inspired confidence, the clear, concise, "Green," had been compelling enough to convince him to press on. Despite those first, subtle misgivings whispering in the back of his mind, there had clearly been some part of it that was getting Alejo where he needed to be, pulling desperate, wanting noises out from the back of his throat even as he shuddered and gasped. Now, with the harsh little sobs that Alejo is choking out like he can't get enough air, with his face wet, eyes glassy for the split second that Josh can see them before he screws them shut, and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists in the opulently soft bedsheets, Josh wonders if that might have been a mistake.  
  
"Hey," he murmurs gently, pushing himself up off his elbows so that he isn't pinning Alejo to the mattress quite like he had been, giving Alejo a little room to breathe while he runs a soothing palm along the length of his quivering flank. "Ale, babe. Can you give me a color?"  
  
Alejo doesn't respond beyond taking another handful of shuddering breaths and alarm bells start blaring in the back of Josh's mind, fear and worry coiled together like a rope, crawling icy up his spine. He swears quietly to himself and starts to pull out, reaching down and wrapping his fingers around the base of his dick to ensure that the condom comes with him, but his progress is halted by the sudden, sweet clutch of Alejo's thighs around his hips. Josh glances up to find Alejo peering at him with hazy, hooded eyes, glistening dark. His face is flushed, hair a mess of sweat-slick curls, and he licks his lips twice before he manages to gasp out, "Green, I'm green."  
  
"Darlin'," Josh says softly, and he can't quite stop the fond curl at the corner of his mouth as he lets the diminutive escape, can’t quite keep the thread of concern out of his tone, "you don't seem real green."  
  
"I am," Alejo insists, rough and breathless, and tries to grind down onto Josh's dick. Josh bites back a moan, because he's hardly immune to the sensation of tight heat sinking down around him, but he prefers his partners not to appear like they're teetering on the edge of a panic attack, so he ducks his head, stilling Alejo with a hand over his hip.  
  
He knows Alejo's type, had him pegged from the second he'd wandered up to Josh in the hotel bar and made surprisingly funny small talk before asking shyly to buy him a drink. Josh has fucked plenty of straight-laced businessmen in his expansive career, almost all of them high-strung and overworked, in the habit of burying their stress until it either consumed them or they found some other avenue of release. Usually, Josh is more than happy to be that avenue - while he prefers to be the one getting fucked when it comes to his personal escapades, there's something incredibly satisfying in watching somebody wound so tight they look like they might snap slowly begin to unspool underneath his hands instead. The issue with Alejo is that he looks a lot closer to viciously breaking apart than gently unraveling, and Josh is no stranger to folk who misjudge their limits in moments of desperation.  
  
"Are you sure? 'cause I'm gonna need a solid yes to keep on right now," he says, dragging his thumb tenderly along the cut of Alejo's hip to soften a little of the steel in his tone. "If you ain't, it's okay. We've got time, we can take a break."  
  
Alejo makes a noise that sounds too close to a sob to be anything else, and lets his head fall back against the pillows. He really is unfairly attractive, which had been a nice enough bonus in comparison to Josh's usual client roster that he'd cut Alejo a deal on the evening - not that Alejo knows that, but even so. The long, lean line of him is sprawled out in front of Josh like the worst kind of temptation, but the way his chest rises and falls in a quick, hitching rhythm raises red flags in Josh's perception that he can't ignore, and when Alejo breathes desperately, "Please, _please_ don't stop," it's strained and thin like he's in pain.  
  
"Hey," Josh says, soft and low, giving Alejo's hip a little, affectionate squeeze, "I didn't say anythin' about stopping. Just think a little breather might do us both some good, all right?"  
  
He waits there, half-buried inside Alejo and brushing gentle, soothing touches against his sweat-slick skin until Alejo manages to nod. It's a tight, clipped motion but enough of a clear acquiescence to this plan for Josh to feel good about it.  
  
"All right," Josh repeats, a quiet confirmation, and slides the rest of the way out. Alejo makes a small, pained noise not unlike a whimper and Josh squeezes his hip again, murmurs soothingly, "You're okay, darlin'."  
  
He considers for a moment before stripping the condom off and tossing it in the vague direction of the small, nondescript trash can in the corner of the room. He always makes a point to carry more than he needs, and with a conference of this size in town he had initially anticipated pulling more than one john anyway, so he's well-equipped to handle multiple rounds with the same partner. When he looks back over, Alejo seems to be breathing a little easier, though he's still reclining against the bedclothes like some kind of tortured, wanton god of classical myth, with his eyes closed and body pulled taut as a marble statue. He shifts and opens his eyes when Josh settles in alongside him, and a bolt of want flares in Josh's belly at the liquid warmth simmering in his gaze. It’s a bright counterpoint to the jagged edge of Alejo’s gasps moments before, and it soothes a little of the fear, the concern gnawing viciously at Josh’s mind.  
  
"Hey," Josh says, and reaches up to cup a palm around the beard-rough hinge of Alejo's cheek, sliding his fingers back into Alejo's sweat-damp hair.  
  
"Hey," Alejo parrots, and it's still thinner than Josh would like but it doesn't sound sharp and two seconds from fracturing, so he'll take it. He leans in and nudges Alejo's nose with his own until Alejo tilts his head, sinking into the kiss so sweetly that it almost makes Josh's teeth hurt. He can feel some of the tension drawn tight across Alejo's shoulders sloughing off and away, so he licks at the seam of Alejo's mouth and is rewarded with a low moan when Alejo opens up to him.  
  
He tastes a little of salt - from sweat or from tears, Josh can’t quite be certain - and vaguely of the martinis they'd indulged in while Josh explained to a slightly mortified Alejo that he was, in fact, a professional escort, and had indeed come to the bar looking for a good time, although perhaps not quite the way Alejo had meant. It had been sort of sweet, actually, and Alejo had course-corrected easily, none of the embarrassed blustering or sleazy attempts at a free ride that Josh was so used to fielding, which may or may not have had a significant effect on Josh's calculations when Alejo had finally summoned up the courage to ask about his rates.  
  
He kisses Alejo slow and deep and tender, and reminds himself not to get used to it. It's the folly of a novice to assume that there'll be a second visit, even from a client who seems to genuinely enjoy your company, and Josh trained himself out of the habit of hoping for more a long time ago. Besides, he's not usually one for this kind of lazy, languid pace, much preferring a kiss with sharper teeth than Alejo is currently up to offering. Even so, Josh would be a liar of the highest order if he said the gentle ease of it didn't settle something in him, some small part of him that worried he might have caught on an unanticipated splinter, unwittingly driven a wedge deeper into the unexpected seam of some lasting damage.

Alejo shifts and tugs at Josh’s hips, nudging him closer and groaning long and deep at every sweeping pass of Josh’s tongue. There’s a slight giddy edge to it, some youthful joie de vivre that Josh had been certain he’d grown out of back when he’d hit the streets running at sixteen with only a moth-eaten duffel bag of clothes and the world’s most taciturn best friend by his side. It’s nice, in a way, and Alejo rises slowly out of the haze he seemed to be in moments before, alert and responsive and enthusiastic without the danger of being balanced at the edge of some precipice that Josh doesn’t know well enough to navigate safely.  
  
After a few long moments, Josh pulls back to take a breath and discovers that in all of their romantic preteen pawing, he's shifted over a so that he's half on-top of Alejo, pinning him solidly in a way the other man seems to enjoy, with an arm on either side of him and a leg slung possessively over his hips. On a whim, Josh bends his head to press a kiss to the corner of Alejo's mouth, drop a tender trail of them over his cheek, up to his temple.  
  
It's just this once, he tells himself, stomach lurching guiltily and a low, warning voice in the back of his head that sounds uncannily like his best friend and business partner admonishing that he should know better. He forces that warning to the back of his mind, reasoning that the chances he'll ever see Alejo again are slim, and he can afford himself a little room to be tender if he wants. Nobody to know about it but the two of them, and they both have a time limit to respect. He darts in again, peppering Alejo’s face with quick, glancing presses of his mouth. Alejo makes soft, teasing noises of harassed discontent and wrinkles his nose, tilting away from Josh’s gentle onslaught, and Josh can’t help but grin down at him. He bites softly at the lobe of Alejo’s ear, the hinge of his jaw, noses at the soft hair curling at his temple and asks, "Feeling better?"  
  
Alejo huffs a laugh and turns to smile up at Josh - something soft and warm and sweet to it that stokes a distant ember deep in Josh’s belly, that familiar voice kicking up into an advisory echo of _‘be careful’_ \-  and considers him for a long beat before  sighing contentedly, “Yes.”

He curls a hand around Josh’s waist, sighs again and looks away for a second; a bashful, almost shamefaced flicker of raw emotion contorting his expression. He licks his lips and when he glances back up he murmurs, “Sorry,” into the space between them. A muted, hesitant apology that makes something in Josh's chest crack painfully.

“Hey now,” he admonishes, leaning in to nip playfully at Alejo’s lower lip, smirking victoriously when Alejo grumbles something unkind in Spanish but kisses back with an edge that sparks a little thrill in his belly. “None of that.”

“A _little_ of that,” Alejo hedges. “I ruined the mood, at least.” He rocks his hips in a shallow wave that makes Josh’s cock, gone somewhat softer in his moment of panic and the long, lazy moments of shared kisses, twitch to attention.

Josh pushes himself up a bit, so that he can make sure he has Alejo’s full attention when he says, “Never apologize for needing to stop, darlin’.” He ruts against Alejo in a short, gentle thrust and Alejo sucks a clipped breath, pupils fattening sweetly and face flushing. “Anyone who won’t do you that courtesy ain’t worth your time. Besides,” he assures with a grin, sly and leaning in close enough to Alejo that he can feel the warmth of his breath against his mouth, “I think we can probably salvage the mood.”

Alejo doesn’t respond beyond surging up to close the distance between them, capturing Josh’s mouth in a kiss that’s just to the side of desperate that Josh likes, hot and deep and wanting with a flint-edge to it that promises there are fires underneath it yet to be stoked to their full potential. Alejo’s grip tightens against his hips and this time when he rocks his hips up their dicks catch and drag, both still slick enough with lingering lube that it’s on the pleasant side of rough.

“ _Fuck_ , sweetheart,” Josh breathes, and Alejo makes a small noise of agreement deep in his chest. Josh sucks a bruise onto his throat and Alejo whimpers, shivering when Josh laves the abused flesh with the flat of his tongue, sets his teeth against the hinge of Alejo’s jaw and says thoughtfully, “You know, I was thinking - ”

He doesn’t manage to make it all the way through the thought before Alejo rolls his hips again, cutting in, breathless and teasing, “Sounds dangerous.”

Josh growls irritably and snaps a little too hard at Alejo’s mouth, bright edge of copper blooming under Alejo’s skin while he hisses at the sudden sting.

“I was _thinking_ ,” he repeats pointedly, “that maybe we ought to try something different to start with.”

Alejo considers him for a long second, curious and suspicious, before asking hesitantly, “What did you have in mind?”

Josh grins, sharp and wicked, and leans down to bite at the elegant hollow of Alejo’s collarbone.

“Well,” he murmurs against Alejo’s skin, dragging his teeth gently across Alejo’s sternum, leaving a trail of bruise-dark kisses down the plane of his chest as he slowly maps the expanse of his body, “I thought you might like to fuck my mouth.” The muscles of Alejo’s stomach tighten sweetly under his tongue as Alejo sucks a breath, and Josh mentally awards himself a point of victory.

When he responds, Alejo’s voice is a little shaky, but this time it’s the familiar quaver of want rather than the unhinged, ragged edge of desperation.

“I thought you were in the business of fucking people.”

“I’m no scholar, but I’m fairly certain ‘mouth fucking’ involves precisely that, darlin’,” Josh says, cutting a sharp, teasing grin up at Alejo, who rolls his eyes. He gets a hand into Josh’s hair, tugging gently at the russet curls while Josh presses a kiss to the blade of his hip.

“You know what I mean, guero,” Alejo reprimands, and Josh grins a little wider.

“Consider it an opening act,” he says, dark and low, viscerally pleased at the careful, measured breath that Alejo takes in response. He’s looking down at Josh like he wants nothing more than to swallow him whole, and as much as Josh enjoys being there to hold the pieces together while his partner does their damnedest to rattle apart, he has to say that he prefers this - blatant want smoldering hot just below the surface of his skin, stoked and ready to flare to life with every flickering spark from his partner’s eyes.

“So?” Josh presses, sucking a loud, sloppy hickey onto the meat of Alejo’s thigh. “Color?”  
  
Alejo’s fingers tighten in his hair, and Josh has already started to reach over the side of the bed to fish another condom out of his discarded jeans when Alejo says, steady and sure, “Green.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you babies are welcome to find me on [Tumblr!](http://thrillingest.tumblr.com) (Also I'm sorry for the extreme delay in responding to comments, I WILL GET TO Y'ALL I PROMISE!!! <3)
> 
> Thanks for reading, darlings! I cherish every one of you~


	6. Round Two - Double Penetration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round two - turn three - greatdisorder  
> 
> 
> Alright kids, this one was sort of a monster for me, but I hope it lives up to all your porny expectations.
> 
> Buckle up and get ready for my favorite kind of self-indulgent garbage: greedy cockslut!Faraday, disgustingly loving OT4s, and one of my absolute new favorite headcanons -- grey ace!V. 
> 
> Also, for anyone that's interested, this exists in the same vague mercenary AU as TheSummoningDark's knifeplay fill, and I'm not even a little sorry.
> 
> Fair warning, it's late and I'm tired and this beast is largely unedited but I hope it's a fun read anyway.

"Are you sure?"

Billy's voice sounds loud in the quiet of the room, even over the rushing in Faraday's ears, and for a long second all he can do is swallow hard. 

He feels more than hears Goody's voice catch underneath him when slick fingers trace where he's already spread open, Goody's dick so deep inside of him he can barely breathe around it, and he almost doesn't recognizes the noise that shudders out of him when he arches into the contact. The fingers move with him, just enough to be infuriatingly too little, and Goody swears in what Faraday's pretty sure isn't English.

"Joshua." Faraday feels feverish and dizzy, his heart pounding in his throat and his stomach flipping over for the way his name rolls off Billy's tongue, slow and sweet like every letter is worth savoring, and the deep flush crawling down over his shoulders only burns deeper when he gives a shaky nod. 

Billy sighs softly and the bed shifts before he's leaning up over Faraday's back to brush a soft kiss to the nape of his neck. Faraday can feel the length of him pressed up against his skin, already hard and searing hot, and Faraday's heart crawls a little higher for it, excitement and nervousness so tangled together he wouldn't be able to tell them apart even if his life depended on it. Billy hooks his chin on Faraday's shoulder, one hand sliding soothingly along his flank, and says, "I want to hear you say it."

Billy's a bastard for expecting Faraday to string together actual words when he's this keyed up, air frozen in his lungs and his voice stuck up behind his teeth. He tries to rock his hips back to say as much as words ever could, eager and wanting, but Goody's hands are firm at his hips, fingers digging in a little as he holds him in place, and sometimes Faraday _hates_ the way the two of them work so seamlessly together.

He loses a short, hard breath through his nose while he tries to pull himself together, and his voice only shakes a little when he manages to say, "I'm sure."

It's small, barely there, but he knows he doesn't imagine the way Billy relaxes against him just a little bit more. Billy noses at his ear a little, catching it with his teeth the way he knows makes gooseflesh prickle down Faraday's neck, and pulls back. Faraday misses the warmth of him immediately but it's worth it for the way the tease of his fingers returns, the calloused pad of Billy's thumb dragging slowly over the rim of his hole like they have all the time in the world. Faraday whimpers before he can stop himself and the heat in his face flares hotter.

"And you'll tell me if it's too much?"

"God damn it, Billy--"

Billy's thick, silky hair whispers over Faraday's skin, the only warning he gets before Billy is nipping sharply at his shoulder blade. "Promise me." Billy's voice is smooth and steady and Faraday kind of wants to kill him.

But Faraday knows it won't go any farther that this without him giving in. Billy's patience is an endless ocean, deeper than Faraday knew could be possible in a person, and this part of their arrangement has been non-negotiable since the first time Faraday hit a wall with them and didn't know how to say so until it was almost too late. 

In a life like theirs, there's a hard-learned lesson in teaching yourself to bear something that strikes up against you in all the wrong ways just because it's not actually _un_ bearable. Faraday, maybe, learned that lesson more times than most people, but whether it's a combination of stubborness and ego or something else entirely he never learned the words for when it comes to digging his feet in and refusing to admit when he's hit his limit, it's a situation that Billy has taken a keen interest in making sure they never end up in again.

So he asks, every time they're sitting on the edge of something new or uncertain or when Faraday is wound so tight that he might snap even under something they've done dozens of times before, and it catches him somewhere raw and tender that any of these assholes could _care_ about him this much.

"Fuck," it's barely a breath, his throat dry and his voice tight and his heart feeling like it's swollen past the capacity of what his body can hold. "Yeah. I promise."

The little bit of tension that was steadily gathering in Goody bleeds out of the other man with that soft little vow, and he leans up to press a tender kiss to Faraday's throat the exact same moment Billy lays one over his spine. "You're always fighting, chéri. Laisses-nous prendre soin de toi."

"He doesn't know how to."

Once, not all that long ago, hearing a voice not belonging to one of his immediate bed partners would have been at least a little jarring. These days, _not_ hearing V's voice curling through the air, fond and teasing, would be infinitely stranger and it rolls a warm, sweet pulse through Faraday even as he turns his head to glare at him.

V just grins back, his cheeks stained faintly pink and his eyes smoldering hot as he leans forward in the plush armchair he long ago claimed as his for nights, like these, where the only pleasure he's looking for is a good show. "Don't look like that, cariño. It's true."

Faraday, whose French is worse than his Spanish and only knows enough of either to lay out the way he'd like to be fucked at any given moment, seriously doubts that when V and Goody both know he has no clue what either of them are talking about. 

He opens his mouth to say so, because even sitting on someone's cock Faraday still won't miss an opportunity to land a well placed barb, but his efforts are immediately halted by the next pass of Billy's fingers, slicker than before and through with teasing if the way they rub up against him is any indication. Billy moves slow and easy, coaxing Faraday's body to give a little, and Faraday's breath hitches like he's just taken a hit to the chest when one of Billy's fingers dips into him.

"Do I have to separate the two of you already?" Faraday can hear the smirk in Billy's voice, in the playful cut of his words, and Goody huffs out a soft laugh underneath them. 

"Fuck you." It's automatic, a response ingrained by habit and without any real bite, and Faraday can feel Billy smiling when the other man leans in to brush a handful of kisses over the line of his shoulder.

Billy makes a quiet noise of consideration, sinking his finger a little deeper into Faraday and no doubt savoring the shudder that racks through him on the slow drag back out. "Maybe later."

One finger becomes two, Faraday's body reluctantly giving way for them to slide home, and the only answer he can give to Billy is a low, ragged groan as his hands curl a little more tightly into the sheets. It hurts in the way that Faraday likes best, that slick stretch just on the right side of almost-too-much that rakes electric sparks down his spine. Billy is being gentle with him, as careful as he possibly can be, but there's no stopping the noise that tears of him when Billy presses into him right up to the last knuckle, something too close to a sob to be anything else.

Goody's hands smooth soothingly over his hips and down along his trembling thighs, shifting just enough to catch Faraday's mouth in a slow, tender kiss that makes his stomach take a dizzy swoop. Faraday can feel just how much it's taking for him to keep still for him, a faint tremor shaking through him and his voice breathless when he asks softly against Faraday's mouth, "Do you want to slow down?"

Faraday shakes his head before Goody even finishes the question, returning the kiss a little harder, desperate and with too much bite. "Don't." The word is riding on a fragile ghost of a breath that sounds like it's already threatening to fall apart. "Fuck, don't."

As if to make his point, to prove that he's no where close to being ready to stop, he rocks his hips back, a tentative little motion that has him sinking a little deeper onto Goody's dick as he grinds back against the fingers seated alongside it, and the pleasure that rolls through him feels a lot like setting a match to gasoline, all consuming and burning hot. Behind him, Billy's breath hitches, a soft little barely there sound that strikes through Faraday like something physical, and he curls his fingers until Faraday whines.

One of Goody's hands finds his where it's twisted in the sheets and Faraday doesn't fight the way Goody slides them together, lacing their fingers tight as Billy steadily works a third into him, and for a long second Faraday stops breathing.

Billy curls over the arch of his back, his free arm sliding around Faraday's chest and his hand splaying flat over the rapid fire drum beat of his heart. “We got you.” It's a promise that slots into some achingly tender place somewhere behind Faraday's ribs and leaves him feeling wrung out and more vulnerable that he ever would just being caught between them like this. Goody squeezes his hand in a soft echo of Billy's words, and reaches out to cup along Faraday's jaw.

“Breathe, mon chou.” They're both waiting for him to adjust, still except for the soft affection and reassurance they're angling his way, and the tender drag of Goody's fingers against his skin makes something in his chest feel like it's breaking open. “Take your time.”

He feels lightheaded, dazed and overwhelmed, and it takes what feels like an endless moment to release the air trapped in his lungs on a shaky exhale against Goody's collarbone. “M’fine,” he murmurs as soon as he can find the words, trembling between them and his voice _wrecked_. “C'mon.”

Billy moves, sliding his fingers in slow, easy thrusts, and Faraday feels a little like he's about to shake apart. All at once it's too much and not nearly enough, and the noises he makes when he rocks into them sound punched out of him, desperate and tight and raw as they stutter out of his throat. It's never been a secret that Faraday _likes_ to be pushed, that he likes to be taken apart, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time he rankled under tender handling that lasted too long for what he was looking for. 

But right now, for maybe the first time in a long while, he's absolutely lost to it, caught in the undertow that's the softness in their touch and the careful way they work him open a little wider every time they move. Goody rolls his hips, a tiny little shift in time with the press of Billy’s fingers, and Faraday almost chokes on the sob of pleasure it pulls out of him.

“Still with us?” Billy’s voice is soft and a little breathless, curling through the air like smoke as he spreads his fingers inside of Faraday a little more until he arches and keens. 

He licks his lips and tries to swallow, his throat feeling bone dry around every hitching little gasp he makes while he tries to drag in more air, and the last thing he feels capable of is navigating words. “Yeah,” he manages, hoarse and thin, and it’s all he’s got. Billy lays a kiss against his skin, equal parts acknowledgement and apology, before carefully easing his fingers out of him. 

Faraday whines in protest, a small scrap of a noise almost eclipsed by the sharp hiss dragged out of Goody when Billy's slips lower to wrap tight around his cock instead. “ _Cher_ ,” there's a warning in Goody's voice, caught up in a desperate sound as he shudders, and Faraday is definitely going to have fingertip shaped bruises to show for the way Goody's grip digs in around his thigh.

“Breathe,” he replies, a teasing echo of Goody earlier, and Faraday would be willing to bet just about anything that Goody is teetering just as close to the edge as he is.

It takes a little maneuvering, Billy dragging Faraday upright with him and guiding him with a gentle hand at his hip to kneel up. He loses a little noise as he slides up Goody’s dick, torn from low in his throat and his thighs quaking. He feels half delirious, want and need and the crackle of sharp-edged pleasure all tangled together to flay him open from the inside out, and all once the bottom of his stomach seems to drop out when he feels the slick press of Billy’s cock nudging up against him. Billy’s self control has always been impressive, but the man deserves a fucking medal for the amount of restraint it has to take waiting for Faraday’s body to reluctantly open up to him, slow and impossibly tight. 

He realizes he’s trembling in a hazy, distant kind of way, his entire body shaking as he tries to remember how his lungs work. It’s almost too much, the burn and ache of being stretched like this, filled beyond what he’s ever tried before, so full of both of them he can’t focus on anything else, and there’s an endless moment where he almost calls it, his head tipped back and a sob caught in his throat as he grips Goody’s hand until his knuckles go white. 

He’s almost startled when a mouth brushes tenderly over his own, his breath hitching hard in his throat for it and his free hand coming up automatically to grab at whatever’s nearest. When he blinks his eyes open, slow and dazed, of course it's V who would be bending over him, his big hands cupped around Faraday's face and his thumbs stroking soothingly over his skin. “It's okay, querido.” He murmurs, lips catching over Faraday's with every word and Faraday fists his hand into the fabric of V's shirt like it's the only thing keeping him from drowning. “Slowly. Estás haciendo tan bueno.”

Time slows, narrowed down to nothing but the the way Goody and Billy's fingers are laced around the cut of his hip and the soft rumble of V's voice wrapping in around him, anchored by them as much as he's being taken apart, and the sound that leaves him when his lungs unlock is a desperate, ragged thing, threatening to shatter apart before it even leaves his mouth. The hands at his hip squeeze gently, and V's eyes are so warm and deep and dark that Faraday feels hopelessly drunk off them when V asks, “Do you want to stop?” 

He knows he could if he wanted to. There's never been a question about that, but with the offer laid out in front of him now the only answer that comes through the fog filling up his head is that he doesn't _want_ to. He shakes his head, a little too desperate, and grips V's shirt a little tighter. V dips his head to kiss him again, sighing against his mouth. “ _Slowly_ ,” he reminds, and, as if just to be contrary, Faraday sinks a little deeper onto the dicks spreading him open, the muscles of his stomach clenching tightly when Billy and Goody suck in a hitching breath at the same time.

“Idiota.” V murmurs around a bite to Faraday's jaw and all Faraday can do is huff out a ghost of a laugh, reeling hard.

They let him take his time, gasping and whimpering as he takes them slow inch by torturously slow inch, until he loses track of whose lips are on his skin or whose voice is a tender reassurance in his ear. He's achingly hard between the steady throb of being filled and V's mouth against his, licking slowly past his teeth until he moans, and plenty past dizzy by the time he fully settles, air thin in his lungs and panting like thinks he has even the slimmest hope of filling them back up. Someone shifts, just a little, and heat unspools so hot and thick and fast in the pit of his belly that it's almost too much to bear.

“Fuck.” He sounds as raw as he feels, halfway to completely undone, and when he tentatively rocks his hips down against then a greedy noise he didn't even think he was capable of making tears out of him like a sob. “Fuck, _please_.”

He almost can't hear them over the frantic tattoo of his heart beating against his ribs, over the eager, ruined sounds working up out of him as Billy and Goody carefully pick out a rhythm together. Goody likes to talk in bed, praise and affection and filth pouring out of him like water from a burst pipe, and his voice already gone low and deep the way it always does when he’s close as he fucks up into Faraday and sighs, “Oh, chéri, if you could see yourself.”

The fire under Faraday's skin burns hotter for it, pleasure crackling through him like a lightning strike every time they sink into him together, and he's so close already, tilting right over the edge of what he can handle, that it only takes V's hand curling around his dick during an almost-too-rough thrust to set him howling.

His world goes white, pleasure screaming through him until Faraday feels lost to it, intense enough to hurt and good enough to want to chase, riding out the peaks of his orgasm like an addict after a high. He gasps into V's mouth, clinging to him like he's the only thing keeping Faraday upright as he shakes and whines, greedy for the thick press of Goody and Billy inside of him until he's sobbing for it.

He hears Goody swear again, a long string of curses as his nails -- or maybe Billy's -- bite deep into his skin, and it takes him a moment to realize that the person babbling is _him_ , his head tipped back and his voice hitching when V's mouth finds his throat, rolling his hips as he pants out a stream of _yes_ and _fuck_ and _don't stop_ and _I need-_

He doesn't know who comes first, only that whoever does slicks the way nicely for the other to fuck him a little harder, a little deeper, until Goody is whining prettily underneath him and Billy is sinking his teeth sharply into the tender flesh at the back of his neck and everything else falls away under the sort of crashing waves of pleasure he doesn't think he's ever going to come up from. 

There are hands on him, he realizes, soothing back through his damp hair and stroking lazily over his thighs, arms looping themselves in around his waist as Billy melts in against the line of his back, and there's a long, easy, drawn out heartbeat of a moment where Faraday knows with startlingly clarity that he'll never be luckier than this.

There's a lot to be said about amazing sex, the kind that hits you in exactly the ways you need it most from the people you trust to give it to you, but Faraday would be a boldface liar if he said that the come down hadn't turned into his favorite part since the four of them started shacking up together. It didn't use to be. Not before. But, then, it wasn't like Faraday had...shit, anything like _this_ , V kissing him so soft and sweet while Billy and Goody try to catch their breath or the slow, gentle way they slide out of him when they do. 

“You okay?” Billy's voice is low in his ear as they ease him down, Goody shifting on the massive bed to give Faraday more room to sink down into it with them, and for a moment the only answer Faraday can give is a soft sound of agreement as he turns blindly into him.

Billy tilts his chin up to catch his mouth in a kiss, soft and lingering like he’s wanting to make up for every one he wasn’t able to get before, and Faraday hums into it. “Yeah,” he murmurs, drowsy and dazed, something in him aching gently for the way Goody curls in behind him like it's the most natural thing in the world. “I’m good.” He reaches out, past Billy to grab the hand he knows will be waiting there for him, and tugs V in closer. “M’perfect.”

He's never deserved anything close to this, and he’s pretty sure he's never going to be able to wrap his head around it having something like it put in front of him for him to take-- this kind of care, this kind of easy, undemanding affection. He’s probably never going to stop being surprised that it’s something they want to give to _him_.

But, he thinks as he curls a little closer into the mess of limbs wrapping him up from all sides, if all he has to do is try to give them it back to them in whatever ways he can, fuck, maybe he'll still be able to make out okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started dirty, peaked into one of the filthiest things I've ever written, and ended somewhere so disgustingly sweet even my teeth hurt. I hope you enjoyed it because let me tell you, it was one hell of a ride to write.
> 
> Translation time!
> 
> 1\. Laisses-nous prendre soin de toi - Let us take care of you.  
> 2\. Mon chou - a silly French term of endearment that directly, and hilariously, translates to "my cabbage" but is used for "sweetie" and, also hilariously, "creampuff". Faraday scowls for three weeks straight when he finds out and it only makes Goody use it more.  
> 3\. Estás haciendo tan bueno- You're doing so good
> 
> A huge thank you to both TheSummoningDark and Thrilling for the French and Spanish help respectively. As always, I'm a sad nerd who only speaks one language and if there are any errors in these ones I don't speak at all, please let me know~


	7. Round 3 - Let's Negotiate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round three - turn one - by [thesummoningdark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark)  
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> This turned out a little more melancholy than I was really intending...

He knows better, of course, than to think that this will fix anything.

It would be a gross disservice to belittle all the good that having Billy in his life has done for him; there’s not a doubt in his mind that he could never have made it this far without Billy’s steadying presence by his side, gently nudging him back toward an even keel when he threatens to spiral. Perhaps, in his weaker moments, he’s indulged himself by imagining that with time and care he could learn to be whole enough again to give Billy something worth having in return.

But in silent moments where he allows himself a trace of honest self-reflection, he knows that the war broke something in him far too fundamental and fragile to be made whole again by a lover’s care, however tender. He savours the good days all the more gratefully now for the knowledge of how fleeting they truly are.

There are still bad days. There always will be. There'll always be days where he can hear himself talking too much and too quickly, the words that fall from his tongue tripping over each other in their haste to escape before they twist poisonously into something else in an unguarded pause, his smile false and fixed for fear of what might replace it if he lets it slip. Days where the sting of whiskey at the back of his throat and the cloying sweetness of opium smoke in his lungs are the only thing keeping him from shaking himself apart, his knuckles white around the flask and ash falling from the end of a cigarette held in trembling hands.

There are still bad nights. More often than not even now he wakes in the middle of the night, frozen in place with his pulse fluttering frantically in the hollow of his throat, his eyes darting unseeing as he desperately tries to remember where he is, where he _isn't_. The earth-shattering boom of artillery follows him out of his nightmares, echoed in the pounding of his heart as dreams and reality tangle chokingly together.

Once he'd had no choice but to put himself back together as best he could, trying to remember how to breathe alone in the dark. It feels a long time ago now. Now he always seems to wake to the familiar touch of calming hands, gentling him like a handler with a spooked horse. The nightmares still have their claws, of course, but it's harder for them to follow him into the waking world when he can turn into the reassurance of strong, comforting arms and breathe in Billy's scent, clinging to the knowledge that he's safe and cared for here.

Some nights that's enough. Some nights he can fall asleep just like that, lulled by the feel of Billy's heartbeat and the steady rise and fall of his breathing, by the solid warmth of another body against his and gentle fingers carding through his hair. Other nights they'll lie awake for a time, talking softly or sharing a cigarette, or having the kind of lazy sex that leaves him too bonelessly sated to do anything but sink into a deep, dreamless sleep. Those are good nights.

But then there are nights where the nightmares are dug in too deep for softness to do anything but make him want to claw his way out of his own skin, when the weight of everything he's seen and done is like a physical force pressing against the back of his neck. On those nights his kisses are half bite, urgent and demanding, greedy for anything that might drown out his demons. It's only when he has his forehead pressed into the threadbare blankets of the bedroll and the grip of Billy's hands leaving fingerprint bruises on his hips, pleasure burning through him as every hard thrust drives the breath from his body, that his mind finally goes blissfully blank.

He'd take it harder if he could get it, rough enough for blood and real pain; a penance to appease the guilt screaming in the back of his skull. But they've had that conversation. Billy won't do it. He's a supremely adaptable man, but he knows with rare certainty exactly where his line is drawn, and that apparently lies firmly on the far side of it.

As it is, he rations himself, skirting the edge of the line and asking for something close to the kind of callous handling he wants only rarely. 

The quiet moments afterward always hold a touch of unease those nights, neither of them quite satisfied with the encounter or at home in the no man's land between what they each want it puts them in. He forces himself to stay still and pliant under the gentle touches that follow, playing along with the unspoken fiction that they're no more than a simple display of post-coital affection, and not Billy discreetly checking him over for any actual injuries.

Much as the care chafes at him on those nights, he recognises it as part of the tacit compromise they make here. The rough handling that went before was for him; this is for Billy. After being the one to push things into this territory, he owes it to Billy to give him the chance to reassure himself that no harm has been done. It's not what either of them wants, not really, but on nights like these it's as close as they can get.

It always takes some time for the tension to fade. He confines himself to pressing the point only when he needs it most desperately, and pretends he can't see the look it puts in Billy's eyes when he shifts uncomfortably in his saddle the next day.

"It's not enough," Billy says one particular morning after, quiet and matter of fact as they strap their bedrolls back onto their saddles.

Goody starts guiltily, a thousand automatic denials leaping to his lips. It's more than enough, more than he has any right to ask for or expect. Some days - god, some endless nights - it feels as though having Billy's presence beside him is the only thing letting him hang on to any semblance of sanity. He doesn't have to think too hard to know that without Billy, his road would have come to a bad end long ago.

But that's not what Billy meant, and he won't waste his breath pretending they don't both know it. It isn't enough. Every precious piece of comfort and support and loyalty Billy's given him, every time he's pushed past the boundaries of his own comfort to try to give Goody what he needs, all of that a thousand times over can't fix whatever it was deep inside him that the war shattered beyond repair. Nothing could. 

"It doesn't have to be enough," he says instead, letting everything else pass unspoken. "It's something." It's all he's got.

Billy's eyes are tired when he finally looks up from adjusting the saddle straps, pausing for a moment to consider his words. "I don't mind when it's because you want it," he says eventually. "I don't like when it's because you think you deserve it. I don't want to hurt you."

Goody sighs softly, and even out on the trail, it's still habit to glance around to confirm that they're alone before stepping in to catch Billy's lips in a kiss. He can feel the tension in the lines of the other man's body, but Billy leans in to meet the kiss regardless, soft and lingering.

“Mon moitié,” Goody says, a soft and fervent promise, “I swear to you, you’ve never hurt me.”

Billy’s eyes are searching, his touch infinitely gentle as his fingertips stroke over the line of Goody’s jaw; Goody turns his face into the touch, desperately grateful that the tenderness doesn’t chafe as it too often does, desperately guilty that what little he can give Billy is so much less than what he deserves.

“I don’t understand,” Billy says quietly, a trace of frustration in his expression. For all that this remains a stumbling block between them, Goody is glad. He doesn’t want Billy ever to have to understand this gnawing guilt and the restless, burning need for anything that might quiet it. But...he owes Billy an explanation, even if this is something he struggles to fully make sense of himself. 

Lord he wishes he could be drunk for this. He wishes that they could have this conversation in the forgiving dark instead of the cold light of morning, that he could speak this aloud to the air as though the presence of another person to listen were pure coincidence. Instead he closes his eyes and leans his forehead in against Billy’s shoulder, as though by hiding his face he could make this any easier to bear.

“It helps,” he says softly, leaning a little closer into the comforting warmth of Billy’s touch. “It makes it easier to forget, for a little while.” He doesn’t know how to describe the blissful blankness that comes over him in the moments where there’s nothing but the harsh sounds of their breathing and the slap of skin on skin and Billy’s solid weight above him pressing him into their blankets, pleasure and pain tangling dizzyingly together until there’s room for nothing else. “I feel—” 

A flush slowly crawls up his cheeks as the closest words to the right ones settle into place at the forefront of his mind. He’s not one to shy away from sentimentality - quite the reverse, in fact - but in this moment there’s a significance, an _honesty_ to these words that he feels painfully ill-equipped to handle. 

“I feel safer in your hands than in my own, chéri,” he admits. “Lord knows I trust your judgement more."

Billy’s fingers curl under his chin, gently but insistently nudging him to lift his head. He follows the urging with some trepidation, fearing what he might see when he meets Billy’s gaze, be it confusion or pity or the first seeds of the realisation that this can’t possibly be worth it.

But of course Billy’s gaze is nothing but calm and measured, a hint of a frown furrowing his brow as he searches Goody’s face. “I need you to promise me you’ll tell me if it goes too far,” he says eventually.

Something cold and shameful drops heavily into the pit of Goody’s stomach. It should be the easiest thing in the world to agree, to give Billy so small a reassurance when he’s done so much. But he doesn’t know that he trusts himself any more to recognise what _too far_ looks like. He doesn’t know that he trusts himself not to want it. It should be the easiest thing in the world to agree, but he doesn’t have it in him to lie to Billy.

“...I’ll try,” he says lamely. Even to his own ears it sounds pitiful. He sighs. "I'm sorry." 

Billy snorts, shaking his head and stealing another quick kiss before pulling away. "I know," he replies. The wry quirk of his lips rather eloquently implies the second half of that sentence that he hadn't put voice to; that's the problem. And well...he isn't wrong. If Goody had ever known how to let go of guilt, how to deal with it in some way other than self-destruction, they wouldn't have this problem in the first place. 

If this is penance for his crimes, he can't help but wonder how much greater Billy's crime was, to be fated to love a broken man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mon moitié - My other half  
> Chéri - Darling


	8. Round Three - Not in the Mood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round three - turn two - by [ThrillingDetectiveTales]()
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Aight babes, strap in because we're about to go on a tooth-rottingly sweet fluff adventure. My prompt for this round was "not in the mood," and while this _technically_ fits, it's really more in the realm of "sleepy cuddles" and "respectful, supportive partner" kink.
> 
> Also featuring trans!V, which is an AU that is very very dear to my heart and if you're also here for that, let me fuckin' sing you the song of my people, dolls.
> 
> Not really beta-read, likely very ridiculous. I hope you enjoy it even so, darlings! <3

By the time that Alejo gets home, he's already exhausted and it's barely gone four o'clock. His back hurts and his shoulders are tight - thanks in part to the stress of a meeting with his thesis committee that hadn't gone quite to plan, and in part to the parade of lazy undergrads who had put off their midterm papers until the last minute and thought their time was better spent appealing to his nonexistent sense of academic mercy than getting their shit together and making it work. Hazard of being the new TA, he supposes. They’ll learn in time that while Ale is perfectly willing to accommodate for many varied things, poor time management isn't one of them.

It probably doesn't help that he and Josh had a busy weekend, out and about visiting with family and friends, which meant that Ale spent a solid sixteen hours or so wearing his binder underneath a melange of sensible button-downs rather than lounging around in one of Josh's hideous workout tanks and basketball shorts with no undergarments to speak of as is his usual wont. The binder doesn't normally bother him so much, but then he doesn't generally wear it for a week solid without giving himself a day off. He probably shouldn't have worn it today, but he didn't want to go without - not so early in his first semester of grad school, when he knew he was going to have so much face-time with the entirety of the literature department. He doesn't regret it, but the pressure of extended wear is making his back seize something fierce, and he can't quite catch the little grunt of discomfort that slips past his teeth when he shoulders the door open and his ribs twinge.  
  
There's clubby bubblegum pop coming from vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, Josh's slightly off-key harmony warbling in and out over top of it, and the scent of what could very well be homemade red sauce - a key part of Josh’s trademark spaghetti, one of the two recipes his mother left him with before she passed that he can competently make - is thick on the air. It makes something warm and hot and sweet bubble up in Ale's throat, the sudden reminder that they live together, now; that at the end of every miserable day like the one he's just capped he gets to come home to a man who is at once the sweetest and wildest creature he's ever known. It makes his knees go a little wobbly and his heart shudder sweetly against his aching ribs, and he starts to feel better when he shrugs his satchel off of his shoulder and lets it drop to the floor with a heavy thud, all the weight of the day falling away with it.  
  
He's got one hand braced on the little half-wall where they keep their keys - in a dish shaped like a grapefruit, courtesy Josh's adopted mom, and next to a viper's nest of irredeemably tangled charging cords, which is nobody's fault but their own - and is already halfway through toeing his shoes off into the scattered array of mismatched footwear piled to the right of the door when Josh's voice rings out, "Babe? That you?" over top of Ke$ha's melodic assurance that it's going down.  
  
"Yeah," Ale calls back, and glances up just in time to catch Josh's head poking around the corner, over top of the island that separates the kitchen from the living room. His smile is all sunshine and wickedness under his glittering green eyes and it makes that effervescent heat in Ale's throat burn deeper. Ale can't help but grin back. "Hey."  
  
"Hey," Josh echoes his greeting, with the same slightly surprised delight he always seems to express every time Ale arrives home, as though he hadn't quite expected him to come walking through the front door - looking like hell, today, undoubtedly - but is inordinately pleased to see him even so. He has an apron on - a gift from Goody, who'd handed it over at their little housewarming party with a twinkle in his eye and a sharp curl to his smile as he'd said in a tone that wouldn't melt butter, "To suit your newly domesticated lifestyle, little brother." Josh has no shirt underneath it that Ale can see, which leaves the odds at a solid fifty-fifty chance that he has any pants to speak of, either. "You're back early."  
  
"I am," Ale sighs in agreement and reaches up to scrub a hand over his face. "It was - " he hesitates, considers shrugging it off and pretending like everything is fine, but he and Josh have been dating for too long for Josh not to pick up on Ale's bone-deep exhaustion, on the line of stress running like a steel rod up his back, so he sighs again and admits, " - not a very good day."  
  
"No?" Josh frowns curiously. Ale shakes his head and Josh puckers his mouth into a thoughtful moue for a few seconds before disappearing into the kitchen with a short, "Hold that thought, babe."  
  
There's the distant sound of a wooden spoon scraping the bottom of a pot and the telltale click of one of the knobs over the stove, the creaking groan of their scrappy little oven, and then Josh comes loping around the corner into the living room and Ale can see that he is not, in fact, wearing anything under the apron whatsoever. He bites his lip to keep from laughing and briefly lifts his gaze toward the ceiling, though there's little he can do to mask the way his smirk tilts up on the side. When he looks back over, Josh is crossing the short distance between the kitchen and the front door, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

 _“Really,_ guero?” Ale asks, injecting as much fond judgment into his tone as he can muster when he feels like he's drowning in something so infinitely warmer and sweeter. Josh's grin broadens, smug and self-satisfied.

“You like it,” he assures once he's near enough, presses a kiss to Ale's cheek and lets his hand curl sweet and possessive at Ale's waist. He smells good - clean and spicy, with his hair fluffing up into little tufts over his ears, which means he found time to shower between work and lacrosse practice and almost certainly a trip to the grocery. When Ale had gone digging around blearily for breakfast at ass o'clock that morning all he'd come up with was a half-full tub of Dijon mustard and a jar of the pickled okra Josh liked to use in Bloody Marys, which, though generally delicious, were a bit on the booze-heavy side to make a hearty start to a busy Monday.

“That's the American dream, ain't it? Comin’ home to find your spouse naked with dinner ready,” Josh continues teasingly, dragging his thumb gently along the line of Ale’s waist.

“We’re not married, guero,” Ale corrects automatically, and Josh nuzzles a kiss against his temple and mumbles something about Ale ruining all his fun.

Ale is so lost in his own thoughts - the ceaseless, steady hum of tasks he needs to complete to ensure that he maintains his scholarship; sudden, panicked memories of all the little chores that still need to be done around the apartment that they didn't have time for this weekend; a rush of triumphant pride that Josh had apparently managed to correctly interpret the hastily scrawled _'food'_ Ale had scribbled on a napkin and stuck to the fridge in the darkness of six a.m. and restocked accordingly - that he doesn't notice Josh moving in even closer until he nudges Ale's nose with his own and murmurs, gently teasing, "You in there, buttercup?"  
  
"Don't call me buttercup," Ale mumbles absently, bringing a hand up to clutch loosely at the thin muslin of the apron. It's the muted, buttery color of raw linen with dainty, scalloped pink fabric to secure it at the neck and waist, and Josh looks absolutely absurd wearing it. Ale loves him so much it makes him dizzy to think about.

Josh huffs a fond, familiar laugh, bumps his nose against Ale’s again, and tilts his head for a kiss.

His mouth is warm and lush and he licks past Ale’s teeth exactly the way Ale likes, pulling a little moan up from the back of Ale’s throat while Ale buries his fingers in Josh’s soft curls, still slightly damp. They kiss for long, steady minutes, Josh’s preferred raunchy techno-pop a distant trill, until Josh is half-hard against his hip and Ale has gone breathless with it. When he ducks his head to catch his breath, Josh grins at him, face flushed pink and entirely too smug, and worms his fingers up under the hem of Ale’s sweater vest and button-down, skirting along the lower edge of his binder.

“What do you say,” he asks playfully, voice dropped into the deep, ragged-edged register that never fails to make Ale thrill a little, “you let me help you slip into something a little more comfortable?” He bites gently at the hinge of Ale’s jaw, presses a stubble-rough kiss to the column of his throat, and Ale should probably be embarrassed at the weak little whine it summons up out of him but he can't quite bring himself to care, tilting his head to give Josh better access.

“‘Course,” Josh continues easily, biting at the line of Ale’s neck with affectionate little nudges of his teeth and rutting up against him in shallow, absent thrusts, “we _could_ always skip that part and I could just suck you off right here.”

Want drops like a lead weight into the pit of Ale’s belly, lighting him up from the inside and warring with the hazy edge of exhaustion pulling at his mind; with the low, pulsing ache in his ribs. Josh tugs his collar to the side and sucks hard at the notch of Ale’s collarbone, worrying a mark he left there that he’s been cultivating for days, and Ale thinks distantly, _fuck it._ He lasted all day wearing the binder despite the way his back had pulled when he put it on that morning, and he’ll forget how tired he is after a few minutes of exposure to Josh’s talented tongue, which he knows from experience. He can survive another twenty minutes if it means that his reward is getting to look down the line of his body and see Josh’s pretty face at work between his thighs.

He flashes Josh a grin and takes an eager, stumbling step back, spreading his legs a little so that Josh can step up between them. While he doesn't hit the door very hard, even the little bit of force his shoulders connect with is enough to jar his compressed ribs and send a knife-sharp spike of pain lancing up his side. Ale makes a small, wounded noise and Josh instantly frowns, brow knitting with concern and touch shifting from intent to gentle where his palms are curled over Ale’s hips.

“You okay?” he asks softly, dragging his thumbs in little soothing strokes along the bare skin between the waistband of Ale’s briefs and the lower hem of his binder. Ale tries to answer in the affirmative but the breath he takes sets his ribs throbbing again and he winds up sucking a hard gasp through his teeth instead, grimacing a little.

“Back hurts,” he admits thinly, and soft, fond sympathy bleeds into Josh’s worried eyes.

He leans in for another kiss, this one milder and tamer though it burns just as sweetly, and murmurs against Ale’s mouth, gentle and teasing, “Maybe we oughta reconsider the part where you get naked, too.”

Ale hums into the kiss, thoughtful, while the pain fades back down to an irritating by manageable level. He winds his fingers a little tighter in Josh’s hair - tiny sparks crackling in his belly at the way Josh shivers, pupils fattening sweetly in those glittering green eyes - and pulls back enough to smirk, “I thought you had this all planned already, amor.”

“I did,” Josh agrees, biting his lip on a moan when Ale shifts his hips forward to meet the swell of Josh’s dick against his thigh. He shoots Ale a sharp, playful warning glance and makes a clicking noise behind his teeth. “But the best plans always leave room to maneuver.” He squeezes at Ale’s hips, the dark, biting edge of his desire softening as he tilts his head and adds, a little gentler, “Besides, seeing you hurting doesn't really do it for me, babe. My boner will keep for five minutes while you make yourself _presentable.”_

He wags his eyebrows on the last word, delivered in a campy lilt that’s verging toward singsong, and Ale snorts.

“Your boner would keep through nuclear winter, guero,” he teases, and Josh just grins.

“Damn right it would,” he agrees. He dips back in for another quick kiss, deep and hot and redolent with promise, rutting up against Ale once, twice while Ale moans into his mouth, before stepping away. He looks a little ridiculous, cheeks pink and mouth swollen, apron tented obscenely in front of him, which lights a warm flush all through Ale’s chest for all that it makes Josh look like the walking punchline to a particularly tasteless joke.“Let me check and make sure I’m not gonna burn our apartment down and I’ll meet you in the bedroom, darlin’.”

Ale makes a noise of agreement as Josh steps away, energy seeming to drain out in his wake, inversely proportional to Josh’s proximity which is hardly surprising. He stifles a yawn in his palm as he shuffles off down the short hallway to the larger of the two bedrooms, which they share, the other having been converted into a horror-movie amalgamation of a home office and a catch-all for their various and sundry possessions. He still feels warm down to his toes, but it’s not the same consuming want from a few moments before. It’s sitting in front of a fireplace with a blanket and a coffee table’s distance between you and the heat off the flames rather than putting your feet up near enough a bonfire that it softens the soles of your shoes. Ale considers absently as he makes his way into their messy bedroom that he might be more tired than he’d initially guessed.

Pulling his vest off over his head is a familiar kind of mild agony, chest still neatly compressed by the binder, but his shirt falls off and away without a fuss once Ale has undone all the buttons. He considers himself in one of the mirrored doors of their closet for a long second, the line of his body made leaner and more lithe by what looks like little more than an unassuming white tank top. He scratches absently at his chin, the five o’clock shadow therein - bless his late father’s giving genes - and heaves as much of a sigh as he can when he feels fastened so tight he might pop.

Someday, he thinks wistfully as he turns away from the mirror, rolling his binder up in the front as high as he can get it without removing his arms, feeling silly despite the many, many times he’s done it before, he won’t have to bother with all of this. He’ll get up in the morning and he’ll put a shirt on and that will be the end of it unless the weather - or, more likely in sunny Southern California, his personal fashion sense - begs the necessity of additional layers.

He rolls the binder up a tiny bit in the back, too, tugging awkwardly at it until he can get his fingers securely dug in underneath it. Josh’ll be here any minute and Ale is determined not to ruin the mood by getting stuck and flopping around pathetically on the mattress until his boyfriend can manage to get him out. It happened a lot, in the early days, Josh stepping in immediately and gently and with the bare minimum of teasing, because it’s still _Josh_ even if he’s been nothing but supportive since Ale came out to him six months into their relationship. He takes as deep a breath as he can manage - a task made somewhat simpler now that his stomach is free - and wrenches the whole thing up and over.

When he straightens up there’s a moment of disorientation where his body settles, parts of him he’d generally rather not think about exposed to the open air, but after one breath, and another, and another, that itching crawl under Ale’s skin settles enough that he can ignore it. He tosses the binder into the nearby hamper - so full of clothes they’re cresting up over the lip of it in a tidal wave of rumpled fabric - and goes about unbuttoning his fly and kicking his pants off, which is a simple enough task with significantly less room for catastrophic embarrassment if he doesn't do it right. He debates leaving his briefs on, but considers that while Josh does occasionally enjoy taking his time to unwrap his prize, he seems laser-focused today so Ale might as well save them both the trouble. He shimmies out of his briefs and then he’s left standing in the buff in their bedroom, alone aside from his reflection - which he's on better terms with these days even if they’re not about to set any records for friendship - and it's about as exciting as one might imagine, which is to say not very.

Ale putters around for a second or two, grabbing a few of Josh’s discarded clothes - well-worn and pockmarked with little holes because Josh will literally let his clothes disintegrate right off his body unless Ale strong-arms him into replacing them - up off the floor and tossing them into the hamper, too, looming mountain of laundry reaching ever higher, before he decides that he might as well just lay down and wait while Josh finishes doing whatever it is he’s doing in the kitchen. He lets out a groan the second his back hits the mattress and takes a moment to appreciate the one splurge he and Josh had pooled their resources to accommodate when they decided they wanted to move in together. The king-sized bed frame had been something of a necessity, with both of them over six feet and Josh built like a brick house to boot, but the mattress was one hundred percent indulgence - soft but solid, downy and perpetually cool to the touch. Ale sinks into it with a little sigh, staring up at the drab off-white of the ceiling, bamboo fan blades drifting in lazy, hypnotic circles overhead.

He doesn't mean to close his eyes, he really doesn't, but some indeterminable amount of time later - minutes slogging slowly by while Ale drifts in that hazy space between asleep and awake - he startles a little at the distant dip of the mattress and then a gentle nudge against his side.

“Hm?” Ale breathes sharply, eyelids heavy when he cracks his gaze and finds Josh smiling fondly at him. He lets his hand drag down along the curve of Ale’s side, splays his palm out across the low plane of Ale’s belly and drags his thumb through the little trail of hair there.

“I left you alone for two minutes,” Josh chides teasingly, voice muted like a whisper. The whole room is aglow with the lazy haze of late afternoon sunshine, sheets of diffused gold picking out the flecks of copper in Josh’s hair and making his eyes seem to glimmer even greener than usual. His mouth is tilted up at the corners, smile so soft and affectionate that it catches behind Ale’s breastbone, warm and familiar, hooks him like a fish and reels itself in tight and sweet.

Before Ale can help himself he blurts drowsily, “I love you.”

It’s hardly the first time either of them have said it - Ale could use every single one of his digits to count and still come up short for the number of evenings he’s gotten a call from one of Josh’s fraternity brothers announcing, fond but long-suffering, that Josh has slipped past the portion of the evening where he lists out all of Ale’s virtues in ascending order and sexually explicit detail and has moved on to the phase where he puts his face down on the table and slurs "I love him so much," over and over again without stopping, generally paired with a polite request for Ale to come and collect him before he gets them all ejected from whatever dive they're currently patronizing.

Josh lets loose a pleased little huff and ducks his head, cheeks gone rosy and delighted. When he looks back up there's some sweet and bottomless warmth swimming in his gaze that makes Ale think, stark and sudden and clear despite the sleepy fog in his brain, that he never wants this moment to end.

“Now darlin’,” Josh murmurs in that same soft tone, leaning over Ale and ducking his head to brush a kiss over his mouth, “that just ain’t fair.”

Ale hums into the kiss and shifts, scooting a little closer to Josh, who noses at his temple for a second before dropping a kiss there, too, and then another at the hinge of his jaw.

“‘S not fair?” Ale mumbles, making a valiant run at fully formed words. His whole body feels weighted, sinking slow and comfortable into the downy sprawl of the mattress around them, into the warmth of Josh at his side.

“You lookin’ at me with those dreamy eyes and tellin’ me you love me,” Josh expounds, trailing little, tender kisses across Ale’s face. “It ain't even a _little_ fair.”

“Sorry,” Ale murmurs, and tries to angle himself so that he can bury his face in the crook of Josh’s neck. He doesn't quite manage, so Josh moves in closer, tugging Ale to him and throwing a leg over Ale’s hip. Ale notes distantly that he isn't wearing the apron anymore, and that he’s still at half mast against the blade of Ale’s hipbone.

“No need to be,” Josh promises easily.

Ale sighs, content, and blinks syrupy slow.

“Still s'ry,” he breathes, something at the back of his eyes start to give gently, pulling his gaze up and in despite his fighting to stay awake. 

“What for?” Josh asks gently, and it sounds like he’s talking from very far away; as if someone has set their hand to the knob that makes the world loud and bright and is slowly turning it down and down and down.

“F’r sleeping,” Ale provides, probably barely intelligible considering that half of his mouth is mashed up against Josh’s collarbone, accent coming out thick and strong despite the slurry-edged syllables, further warping the edges of his words. “I know you wan’ed t’...” He trails off, only just managing to wiggle a hand free from where it was tucked in between them to gesture vaguely toward their entangled legs. “Y’know.”

Josh huffs a laugh into Ale’s hair - a short, sharp gust of warmth, and drops a kiss to the crown of his head.

“There’ll be plenty of time for _you know_ later, sweetheart,” Josh assures, running his fingertip along the curve of Ale’s ear with a light stroke that makes Ale shiver sweetly and sigh, melting into him even further. “You just rest, all right?”

“Wha’bou s’ghetti?” Ale slurs, already lost to the dark, warm comfort of sleep.

“It’ll keep,” Josh breathes, an intimate, tender echo of his earlier lascivious promise.

Ale can't be certain, but he’s pretty sure that as he drifts off, lulled into slumber by the slow, steady drone of the fan overhead and the low, heady beat of Josh’s pulse against his cheek, Josh murmurs into his curls, soft and painfully sincere, “I love you too, babe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! As always, I am on [on Tumblr](http://thrillingest.tumblr.com) if you need anything from me or just want to come flail. <3


	9. Round Three - Blindfold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Round three - turn three - greatdisorder  
>   
> 
> 
> So it turns out I'm both really bad at meeting deadlines and at keeping anything I write for this game under 2500 words.
> 
> Anyway I hope y'all enjoy reading about Werewolf!Faraday having too many feels about trusting Vasquez as much as I enjoyed writing it. It's not even a little bit beta read, as per usual, so enter at your own risk &etc.
> 
>  **Content warnings:** A little bit of blood while Vampquez has a snack and a little bit of dubcon that the boys get neatly smoothed out.

The rope is a coarse, rough bite at his skin when tightens in around his wrists, stringing him up as neatly as a rabbit ready for supper when Vasquez pulls it taut up through the decorative slats in the weathered headboard, and heat blooms in the pit of Josh’s stomach like striking a match to gunpowder, so swift and brutally hot that he feels like he can’t breathe around the way it burns up all the air stuck in his lungs. Vasquez grins above him, his eyes glittering like oil slicks and his teeth unnaturally sharp, and Josh’s heart trips over a beat.

He knows if he wanted to he could break free. He’s stronger than a bit of rope, stronger than the beat up wood it’s attached to, and when it comes right down to it having his skin rubbed raw and bloody is a small price to pay for the freedom of tearing his hands free.

But, more importantly, he knows it’ll never have to come to that. Not here, not when it’s Vasquez above him, strong and solid with an undercurrent of aching warmth flickering up under the wicked want in his eyes when he looks down at Josh. It took some doing, some missteps and some fumbling and some vicious, snarling fights when one of them strayed to close to a ragged edge lurking in the underbrush that wasn’t meant to be disturbed, but somehow it all still lead to Josh looking up one day with the realization that if he had to trust any one person to stand at his back without putting a bullet in it, of course it would be Vasquez. 

Somehow, even tumbling blind through whatever this is between them, through whatever it is they’ve been doing since they struck up against each other in Rose Creek like thunderclouds in those thick, suffocating moments that signal all hell about to break loose before an unholy storm, being safe here stopped sounding so much like question and a whole lot more like a promise. 

“Okay, guero?” 

He's grinning, that soft edge that makes Josh's chest hurt curling up at the corners of his mouth, and Josh scowls out of reflex, glaring up at him. Vasquez just laughs, warm and low, and leans down to bite a kiss into the hinge of his jaw that makes him shiver. “So sour, amorcito. Did you change your mind?”

“Maybe I don't much appreciate the way you're lookin’ at me.” Josh mutters like it isn't a bold faced lie, even as he readily tilts his chin to give the hot drag of Vasquez’s mouth more room to move.

Vasquez makes a noise like a big cat, a quiet rumble of a purr against Josh’s throat that goes straight to his cock. “And how's that, cariño?”

“Like I'm dinner.”

He can feel Vasquez’s grin against his skin, wide and sharp, the edge of one fang teasing tantalizingly against the flutter of Josh's heart just below the surface. “Dinner? Never.” The shape of every letter mouthed out against the line of his neck sends a fresh hot bloom of want lighting up from the bottom of his belly, the scrape of Vasquez’s beard setting gooseflesh prickling all the way down to his fingertips, and Josh swallows hard. “Dinner is suppose to be good for you.”

Josh growls and tries to buck him off, headboard creaking as he strains against it, but Vasquez sways easily with him looking for all the world like he's having the time of his life. Josh flashes his teeth up at him, just as sharp. “Think you're so damn funny.”

Vasquez leans back on his heels and, kneeled half dressed between Josh's bare thighs as he is, his dark features gone darker with lust, he makes just about the prettiest picture Josh thinks he's ever seen. He considers Josh for a long second, head cocked to one side like he's mentally untangling a particularly stubborn knot, before his grin goes a little more wicked and his hand falls to finger the ridiculous drape of the scarf knotted at his waist. “Do you trust me?”

Josh’s eyes jump up from where they had been following Vasquez’s clever fingers, and heat floods his face before he can stop it when they meet the hot depths of Vasquez’s own. He snaps, sharp and defensive, “Do I got a choice?” as if he'd ever let himself be put in this position to start if he didn't.

Vasquez’s grin just widens a little more like he already knows the answer, picking at material gathered around his waist until he can strip it free, and Josh narrows his eyes suspiciously. “...what’s that for?”

“If you don't want to see,” Vasquez starts, the red fabric slipping between his hands until he’s got hold of it, pulling it tight between two fists, and something about it drops like lead into the pit of Josh’s stomach. “Then, maybe, you don’t see.”

He’s tense under Vasquez, wary as a stray who’s been taught through experience that even scraps come at a price, and once the penny drops and Josh understands his meaning he winds impossibly tighter.

Something in Vasquez’s face goes softer for it, a flicker of concern, of worry, taking up some of the space heat occupied just before, and he frees a hand to splay it flat over Josh’s chest before leaning down to brush a kiss over his mouth. “You can always say no, guerito.” There’s too much weight to it, spoken like some great promise so much deeper than what the words he’s breathing over Josh’s lips should ever be able to hold, and a shudder rolls through him right down to his toes.

He believes him, is the thing. He really believes that if he refused right this second, Vasquez wouldn’t hesitate to toss the scarf over the side of the bed to join his fancy linen shirt and the tangled mess of Josh’s own clothes where they lie strewn across the floorboard. Like the ropes, like any number of things that Josh has agreed to let Vasquez show him or to do him, Josh knows that if he decided he’d had enough of whatever he’d gotten himself into Vasquez wouldn’t fight him on it.

He doesn’t pretend to know why that is or what, exactly, Vasquez gets out of bending to Josh at the slightest hint that Josh may want him to, may _need_ him too, but just the reminder that he will is enough to catch Josh strangely every time it comes up, digging up inside him like the press of fingers into a fresh, tender bruise. 

“You hear me say no?” His voice is a little too ragged already, threatening to catch on some jagged edge in his throat, and he swallows around it. “Go on, then, if that’s where you’re gettin’ your kicks these days.”

The curve on Vasquez’s mouth is caught somewhere between a soft smile and the kind of smirk that makes Josh feel like he’s been caught up in a snare, pinned in place with no escape even if he hadn’t been quite literally trussed up like a present waiting for its unwrapping, and Vasquez bites one more kiss, sharp and playful, to Josh’s mouth before he shifts to tie the scarf around his eyes.

Something in his stomach twists with the knot that Vasquez tightens, the fabric so thick not even a scrap of light makes it through, and all at once every little whisper of Vasquez moving or creak of the bed frame seems blaringly loud in the otherwise quiet room.

He jumps when Vasquez’s hands slide over his chest, callouses catching over the gnarled scars still twisted into his skin from that gatling gun, over lines dug into him from older hurts with uglier stories, and he tries not to pay much mind to the way the breath he manages to unlock from his lungs shakes a little on the way out.

“Eres tan hermoso,” Vasquez murmurs, soft and almost reverent in a way that makes Josh feel pulled right open as his hands curled in over the cut of Josh’s hips. “I think I’ll keep you like this, hm? It suits you.”

Josh kicks out blindly for it, scowling dark and mean, and would have probably managed to catch Vasquez squarely in the chest with his heel if he were a little bit faster. As it stands, Vasquez catches him easily by the ankle, squeezing it in what might have been a warning if not for the low, delighted laugh that rumbles out of him. Josh’s belly swoops for it anyway, and his breath catches for the drag of Vasquez’s beard when the other man dips his head to press a teasing kiss to the skin between his fingers. “Ah, ah,” He chides, dragging his mouth sweetly up Josh’s calf in a way that makes his dick twitch. “Relájate.”

His lip curls back, hands balled up into fists above his head as Vasquez nuzzles a familiar line up the inside of his thigh, the uncomfortable reality of being caught so vulnerable like he is warring with the sparks of pleasure, bright and sharp as muzzle flash, licking up his spine as Vasquez sucks a dark bruise in over the otherwise unblemished skin under his tongue. “Thought I weren’t good enough for your _sophisticated_ palette.” Josh mutters, only a little sullen even as he lets his legs fall open a little wider with the gentle nudge given to them as Vasquez shifts in closer. Vasquez hums out something that may have been a laugh and Josh can only imagine the smug look on the bastard’s handsome face.

“Tan sensible,” he answers, amused. He nips in over the mark he left behind and seems satisfied to feel Josh shiver for it. “Would you feel better if I told you I always had a sweet tooth, guero?”

Josh snorts. “That is _the_ dumbest joke I have ever heard, includin’ the time you said--- _ah_.” Vasquez’s fangs sink sweetly into the meat of his thigh, opening him up for a fresh rush of blood directly into the firebrand press of the other man’s mouth, and Josh gasps around the pathetic whimper of a noise it drags out of him. 

He arches eagerly into it, dizzy for it like he always is anytime Vasquez’s fangs find home on him, and the low groan of pleasure he feels against his skin seems to shake through him right down to his core. He chooses not to look too closely at why he's alright with this or how he can enjoy it. He doesn't have words to fit around the heady thrill of what it feels like to have a creature the likes of Vasquez to make a meal out of him, the suckerpunch lust of being fed on combined with the thick satisfaction of seeing him drunk off it after, pupils blown and his eyes heavy lidded like Josh's blood is a drug he can't seem to get his fill of.

It's a familiar hot ache, enough to distract him a little from the lingering unease coiled up in him like a rattler waiting for the wrong footfall to land too close, his entire world narrowing down to the sharp pleasure-pain of Vasquez’s fangs keeping the punctures open and the bruisingly strong grip of Vasquez’s hands around his thighs that Josh likes best and, despite the shallow way the air in his lungs sits, it makes it feel easier to breathe for a minute.

Until, that is, Vasquez’s hand slips along underneath his thigh, following the curve of Josh’s ass before dipping in, dragging the pad of his finger over Josh’s hole the way he’s done dozens of times before, too dry to be anything but a tease, and Josh flinches away from the touch so sharply that Vasquez’s fangs catch in his skin before he can pull them free. Pain rakes up through him, sending his heart stuttering where it’s lodged itself in Josh’s throat, and he tries to bite back the wounded noise caged up behind his teeth before he can make this any worse.

He doubts it matters because he can hear the concern in Vasquez’s voice when he murmurs, soft and worried, “Guero?” and Josh can just imagine the way those bottomless dark eyes soften as they look up the tense line of his body. 

“I'm _fine_.” It's bitten out, sharp and waspish like that'll be enough to cover the tremor running under his words. The air feels loaded, heavy and thick, and Josh tenses for a fight he already knows isn't coming. The tension eases some with Vasquez’s soft sigh and the way he nuzzles in gently against the wounds in Josh's thigh already set to healing, lapping at the blood still beading up, slow and gentle before saying, “You don't seem fine.”

Josh’s face flares hot and he bares his teeth in a challenge. “Funny, I don't recall askin’ your fuckin’ opinion on it.”

Vasquez brushes a tender kiss up against his skin and Josh's heart feels swollen up like a fist. “I think,” he says, resting his cheek against Josh's leg a moment before pulling away, “I changed my mind.”

“I said--”

“I heard you.”

Josh snarls, his hackles up and his fists clenched so tight that he can feel the bite of his fingernails digging grooves into his palms. He's never done well with feeling helpless, particularly if it's obvious enough that anyone else can take notice, and all at once the steady timber of Vasquez’s voice, the gentle understanding Josh can hear in it, rakes up against his skin like a fistful of glass. “I ain’t playin’ games.”

“Patience, amor.” There's a whisper of fabric in the air as Vasquez finishes stripping down and Josh has no trouble imagining the long lean lines of him standing over him, all coiled power and bare skin. He hears another rustle, the soft noise of a bottle being uncapped, and Josh's stomach turns over on itself when the familiar scent of macassar oil hits his nose. “Siempre estás en una prisa.”

The bed dips under Vasquez’s weight as he kneels back up onto it and Josh sneers to keep from thinking about the way his heart is hammering in his heart in anticipation of everything he can't see. “You know I don't speak Mexican.”

“Sólo cuando quieres algo.” Vasquez’s voice catches on the words, shuddering out of him on an exhale, and Josh's throat goes dry for it. 

He licks his lips and he’s still hard despite the unpleasant jolt from just moments ago. “What're you doin’?” 

The bed shifts and Vasquez sighs soft and sweet and breathless in a way that makes Josh feel like someone just took a match to him. “Patience.” He repeats, his accent thick on his tongue, and Josh swallows hard.

Seconds stretch into minutes that seem to stretch into an eternity, pinning Josh firmly between anxious anticipation and the thrill of whatever Vasquez has planned, and he's ready to snap at him to get on with it just as an oil slick fist curls itself in around the hot line of his dick. Josh makes a noise he'd be embarrassed about any other time, thin and desperate and greedy, and ruts his hips up against squeeze of Vasquez’s palm on instinct.

“So eager all the sudden, hm?” Vasquez purrs, sounding more pleased with himself than he has any right to as his hand slides slowly up Josh's length.

“Fuck you.” He means to say it sharp and mean, but all that comes out is a heavy groan as his head falls back against the pillows, arching into Vasquez’s touch as much as he's allowed.

Vasquez clicks his tongue, a mock show of disappointment, and shifts to straddle Josh's hips. The heat in his belly stokes to a wildfire when Josh suddenly understands what Vasquez had been doing a second ago, what he means to do now, and Josh regrets ever letting Vasquez’s blind him if it means he’ll miss the opportunity to watch. “Always ruining the surprise, guero.” Vasquez says, confirming Josh's suspicions a heartbeat before he's teasing himself up along the slick line of Josh's cock with a soft noise of approval. “Makes me think maybe you don't deserve it.”

Josh shudders under him with a groan ripped straight from the pit of his stomach and the headboard whines in warning as he strains against the rope holding his wrists in place. “Fuck.” He's already panting, hips twitching up for more as he yanks uselessly at where he's strung up. “Fuck, wait--”

Vasquez shifts the angle of his hips until the head of Josh's cock catches where he's already worked himself open, one of his hands fisted up around Josh to hold him where Vasquez wants him, and slowly sinks down.

They don't do it this way often, mostly due to what Josh assumes is a preference on both sides, but it doesn't make it feel like any less like being a gift he's never done anything to deserve when the tight, velvet heat of Vasquez wraps in around him. He moves slow, working his way down Josh's dick with easy rolls of his hips and soft, sweet little sounds of pleasure, and by the time he's settled flush Josh already feels like he's about to shake apart.

“Fuck,” he says again, as if it’s the only word he can remember, as if it's the only one he’ll ever use again. “ _Fuck_.”

Vasquez curls over him, dipping to catch Josh’s gasping mouth with his own and licking in past his teeth to swallow every sound dug up out of him when Vasquez rocks his hips. Josh can still taste the coppery tang of blood on his tongue, nearly catches his own on the sharp tip of a fang when he chases the taste back into Vasquez’s mouth, and there’s long dizzying moment where he can’t be sure he won’t tip over the edge right then and there. “Better?” Vasquez asks, his lips brushing Josh’s with every word, and Josh has a crystal clear image in his head of how beautiful Vasquez has to look right now, sweat sheening on his pleasure flush skin and his pupils gone fat and greedy.

He swallows thickly past the knot it makes in his throat and voice sounds a lot like it’s been raked over hot coals when he finally finds enough air in his lungs to answer. “Yeah.” He leans up, straining against the rope to chase Vasquez's mouth when the other leans back. “Yeah, fuck. Better.”

Vasquez has always liked to draw it out, working Josh to madness in torturously slow degrees until he’s ready to fall apart at the seams and now is no different. He leans back, rolling his hips to take Josh as deeply as he can with a low rumble of a moan, and the whimper Josh loses sounds pathetic even by his own low standards as he shakes underneath him. He grinds up, desperate and needy, and yanks at the rope around his wrists until they burn.

“Vasquez.” Work roughened hands slide over his skin, bracing against his chest as the man above him moves. It’s a slow, lazy pace,Vasquez shifting his weight up until he’s satisfied before slowly rocking back down, and Josh thinks this must be what losing your mind feels like. “Vas-- _Ale_.”

“Yes, querido?” Josh can feel the quiver in Vasquez’s thigh, can hear the breathless catch to his voice every time he rolls his hips, and he feels like he’s drowning.

“Fuck, I-- I need--”

Vasquez bends over him again, kissing Josh so hot and hungry that he feels like he’s about to be devoured by it. “Tell me,” he breathes over Josh’s mouth, his voice turned ragged in the way that licks lightning flashes of need up Josh’s spine, and Josh digs his heels into the mattress for purchase, gripping the line of rope tethering him to the headboard like a lifeline as he fuck up into him. Vasquez’s breath catches hard in his throat, the noise he makes sounding punched right out of him, and Josh whines.

“Let me-- I want--” He barely recognizes the sound of his own voice, tattered and wrecked, bubbling out of him like he has no control over it once he starts talking. “Take it off. The fuckin’-- the scarf, fuck, sweetheart, let me see you. I need to see you. I need--”

The dim light cast by the candles in the room seems glaringly bright after having been so completely shut out when Vasquez tugs the scarf free and Josh is gasping, blinking wide eyes up at the vision Vasquez makes above him like he can barely believe what he’s seeing. He’s a vision if there ever was one, his curls wild and a flush sitting high up on his cheeks and his cock so hard it’s leaking as he fucks himself slow on the hard length sitting inside him. He’s close already. Josh can tell by the hitch to his breath, in the fine tremor shaking through his muscles, and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything as amazing as the man above him.

“You’re beautiful.” The words tumble out of Josh before he can stop them, tripping over each other like they can’t wait to get out of his mouth, arching up into him desperately like being skin to skin, like being pressed up inside Vasquez so deeply neither of them can breathe for it, isn’t enough. “Fuck, you’re beautiful. Let me see you. Let me watch you. You’re perfect, darlin’, _please_.”

If Vasquez was beautiful before, it’s nothing compared to what he looks like when he spills in a hot rush between them, arching as he goes vice tight around Josh’s cock with a noise that sounds pulled out of him by force, and Josh _howls_ when he goes careening over that edge after him. His hips snap up into the impossibly hot grip of Vasquez’s body one last time, a sharp _crack_ filling the air as the headboard finally gives under the abuse of Josh straining against it, and everything goes white under the delirious feedback loop of pleasure as they come apart together. 

He’s distantly aware of Vasquez working above him, easing himself off Josh and his thighs trembling while he supports his weight long enough to tug the rope still holding Josh’s wrists up free. They drop like lead once Vasquez lets go of them, blood rushing back to his fingertips in a hot, tingling burst of sensation and the sore ache in his shoulders already starting to bleed into the barely there kind of background hum he’ll forget about the moment Vasquez melts back in against him.

Josh makes a soft rumble of a sound when he does, relaxing under the way Vasquez likes to drape over him like some ridiculous, overly affectionate barn cat, and happily tilts his chin to welcome the soft kiss being dropped against his jaw. His voice is a sweet low murmur when he finds his words again, wrapping in warm around Josh when he asks, “What do you think, guerito?”

Sleep is just on the horizon. Josh can feel it in the boneless melt of his body against the mattress, in the heaviness of his eyelids that make it all that much easier to keep them closed, and it takes him a minute for the words to even settle. “About?” 

“That maybe,” he says without hesitation, pressing a gentle line of kisses all the way to the spot under Josh’s ear that makes him shiver, “next time I wear the scarf.”

Lingering embers of heat crackle to life bright and hot in the pit of Josh’s belly for the immediate mental image of Vasquez laid out for him like a meal, vulnerable but trusting, before he’s almost swept away by the intensity of what Vasquez is offering him. He cracks an eye to find Vasquez smiling at him, easy and open in the way that always makes Josh feel like someone’s gotten a hand around his heart and decided to give it a squeeze. “You’re serious?”

He shrugs one shoulder, his smile hitching a little wider. “Why not?” 

Josh can think of half a dozen reasons off the top of his head why trusting him with another person's vulnerability is only ever a mistake, but it’s hard to put a voice to any of them with such open warmth spread across Vasquez’s face. It’s hard to believe someone tagged as a dangerous outlaw could have a smile that feels a lot like the soft buttery licks of sunlight the morning after a storm, and it makes something in Josh’s chest throb, tender and painful.

He kisses Vasquez, harder than he means to under the rush of emotion threatening to drag him under, and Vasquez meets it easily, riding out the edges of it until he can get Josh to gentle sweetly under the press of his mouth, until Josh is dizzy with it. “Yeah,” he breathes when they break, a grin cracking open across his face before he’s nudging his nose against the Vazquez's. “Why not?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. _Eres tan hermoso_ \-- You're so beautiful  
>  2\. _Relájate_ \-- relax  
>  3\. _Tan sensible_ \-- So sensitive  
>  4\. _Siempre estás en una prisa_ \-- You're always in a hurry  
>  5\. _Sólo cuando quieres algo_ \-- Only when you want something
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks again for Thrilling patiently being my handy dandy translator so I don't embarrass myself. If anything needs a correction, please let me know~


	10. Round 4 - Toy Use

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round four - turn one - by [thesummoningdark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark)  
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> Loosely set in Thrilling's teachers AU, though that's not hugely important to the story.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, guero.”

Josh waves a dismissive hand as he leans in to lift the case of beer from the back seat. “It’s fine,” he replies, surveying the interior of the car for a long moment before, apparently satisfied that anything left behind is far less important than the beer, hip-checking the door shut. “We’re not _that_ early.”

“It’s rude to show up unannounced,” Ale says with the endless patience of one entirely too familiar with Josh’s unique approach to basic human social etiquette.

“They shoulda thought of that before they gave us a key.” Josh is already halfway up the driveway, beer cradled lovingly in his arms. “And _you_ shoulda thought of that before you let me drive over here.” 

It’s a fair feat of hand-eye coordination, juggling beer and keys to get the door open. The house beyond is neatly kept, clearly ready for expected company, but there’s no sign of the inhabitants as Josh strolls in like he owns the place. He sets the beer down on a kitchen counter, and takes a moment to pick out a bottle, pop the cap, and take a contemplative pull before following the sounds of movement toward the bedroom.

He cheerfully bursts through the door, interrupting their hosts where they’re frozen in the act of hastily tugging their clothes back on; Billie unruffled as ever despite her mussed hair, Goody flushed and valiantly attempting to redo his flies with one hand. Josh leers. “Shoulda guess you two’d be tryin’ to skip straight to dessert.”

“We should never have given you a key,” Goody mutters. He turns to Billie and adds, a touch plaintively, “Why did you give him a key?”

“It was getting pathetic watching him drunkenly try to break in,” Billie replies serenely.

“Fuck you,” Josh counters amicably, turning back towards the door. “C’mon. We gotta get V’s tamales in the oven, and I can’t promise we ain’t gonna set your kitchen on fire.”

He grins at the sound of the long suffering sigh behind him as he turns to leave, graciously allowing their hosts a little privacy to finish getting dressed and making themselves presentable and generally pretending like they weren’t just a hair away from getting walked in on mid-fuck. The look Ale gives him as he comes back through to the kitchen is that of a man seriously questioning his own good taste and judgement.

The others start to filter in about half an hour later; Josh gleefully regales each of them in turn with a progressively more embellished retelling of the incident, which is already promising to have grown to mythic proportions by Monday morning. The only thing that prevents the tale from spiralling off into pure fantasy is Billie’s steady gaze boring into the side of his head. She isn’t exactly easy to read, but somehow he’s still absolutely certain that he can feel her methodically weighing the pros and cons of different ways of disposing of his body.

Despite getting off to a start that Josh will be recounting at staff christmas parties for years to come, on the whole it turns out to be a fairly civilised evening by their own low standards. Dinner is excellent, and between all of their contributions there’s more than enough to go around and leave leftovers to idly pick at over a card game as they work their way through the generous selection of various alcohols they’d brought with them.

Evening draws on, and one by one they start making their excuses. Sadly they are all responsible adults these days, at least by the definition of the term that involves frequent early mornings and a waning tolerance for hangovers.

The sun has slipped down behind the horizon by the time the last stragglers wind their way to the front door, stars glittering coldly overhead as the last fiery shades of sunset fade from the sky. Josh throws them a parting leer as he leans up against the doorframe. “We’ll let you two get on and take care of that unfinished business.”

Goody sighs, the hint of a flush that’s been lingering on his cheeks all evening deepening. He’s been on edge all night, quiet and distracted, shifting uncomfortably in his seat whenever any attention was drawn to him. Naturally it had done nothing but stoke Josh’s glee at the awkwardness of the situation.

Josh squints at him, tipsily dubious. “You’re not _actually_ embarrassed, are you? C’mon, man, I’m just yanking your chain.”

“Joshua,” Goody says conversationally, laying a companionable hand on his shoulder. “With all the respect and affection in the world, get the hell out of my house.”

"Okay, okay, I'm going--" He throws Billie a wink over his shoulder as he turns to catch up with Ale, waiting with weary patience by the car. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

The door shuts with a decisive click behind him.

In the house, the flare of the headlights casts brief, shifting shadows on the walls of the darkened front room. The shadows fade along with the low rumble of the engine as they recede. As the tail lights round the street corner and disappear, Goody leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window and gives a low, heartfelt groan.

“I think that qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment,” he says, apparently to no-one in particular.

There’s almost no sound to the soft footsteps that pad up behind him, but nonetheless he’s already leaning into the touch as Billie wraps her arms around his waist and rests her forehead against the nape of his neck. A shudder runs through him as her arms tighten; he can _feel_ her satisfied little smirk as she slowly and deliberately rocks her hips up against him. The noise that falls from his lips is a pathetic thing, the reserves of willpower he’d been drawing on to make it through the evening finally collapsing when there’s no-one here to keep up the facade for.

He turns in Billie’s arms, pulling her in close against him as he catches her lips in a hungry, needy kiss. She gives a soft, pleased sound as she presses in closer against him.

“I was half expecting you to cheat,” she murmurs, her dark eyes mischievous as she tucks her hands possessively into the back pockets of his jeans.

“And rob myself of the payoff?” he replies, arching an eyebrow. “Credit me with _some_ capacity for delayed gratification, chérie.” 

“Oh?” The curl of her lips is deeply amused, her eyes innocent in a way which always promises trouble for someone - usually him - as she starts to pull away. “So you won’t mind waiting a little longer then…”

He catches her around the waist, spinning them quick and playful like the steps of a dance as the movement carries them a few merciful feet closer to the bedroom. “Billie, darling,” he says seriously, something warm curling in his chest for the way they move so easily together, for the way she fits against him like they were made for it. “If you don’t take me to bed right now, I swear I’ll die.”

She laughs soft and quiet as she threads her fingers through his and steps away to tug him toward the bedroom door; he follows readily, even the desperately frustrated arousal that’s been simmering under his skin all evening momentarily unimportant beside the aching affection that steals his breath every time he thinks on how lucky he is. Even here and now in the home they share, with matching rings on their interlaced fingers, he can still hardly believe that someone like Billie could ever choose him.

They tumble through the bedroom door in a flurry of breathless kisses and familiar hands, laughter lost between their lips as they fumble with each other’s clothing. Moonlight is spilling in through the open curtains, painting pale stripes across the rumpled sheets, turning their skin to something silvery and ethereal as it’s bared by the shedding of clothes. Sprawled out across the sheets, Goody can only stare in wonder at the vision Billie makes above him, an expression of unabashed hunger framed by the dark fall of her hair and the lean lines of her body cast into sharp relief by the moonlight.

His breath catches in his throat as she leans in over him, her hands braced on the mattress on either side of him and her hair brushing tantalisingly over his skin, to kiss him deep and lingering. She settles her weight in against him slowly and deliberately, insinuating a knee in between his spread thighs and rocking up against him to make him moan. He shudders desperately under her, a wave of want and need so intense it’s almost painful rushing through him as he grinds shamelessly down onto the solid pressure of her thigh. “Billie, please,” he breathes, a fervent plea whispered against her lips like a prayer.

She presses a tender kiss against the line of his throat before pulling back to turn her attention to the zipper of his jeans. He’s breathing hard as he lifts his hips to let her slide them off, leaving him flushed and naked under her, achingly hard and already trembling. The smile that curls her lips is utterly sinful as she settles back in against him again, nuzzling into the side of his neck as her fingers drift down to tease at the base of the toy still buried deep inside him. A desperate sob of a sound falls from his lips as she wraps her hand around it properly to fuck him on it slow and shallow. It’s not nearly enough, not beside everything he wants, but after a torturous evening of feeling it shift inside him every time he dared move, even that teasing motion has him gasping and arching against the sheets.

“Maybe I should get some more lube…” she muses with mock thoughtfulness, shifting her weight as though to pull away. Goody groans, his head falling back against the mattress with a muted thump.

“Billie,” he says with theatrically exaggerated patience, wrapping his arms around her waist to pull her in flush against him. “Mon moitié, mon âme sœur, thanks to the miracle of silicone lube I and everything I love will still be well and truly lubed up in three weeks’ time. As well you know.” He nips lightly at the hollow of her throat before brushing a soft kiss over her lips. “Stop teasing, amour. I need you.”

“If you insist,” she murmurs, kissing him again before lifting her hips and giving them a pointed little wiggle. He needs no further encouragement to unbutton her pants and slide them off, revealing the harness she’s been wearing underneath since they’d hastily made themselves decent when Faraday barged in. She leans back to finish stripping off her pants, and even far gone as he is, he can’t help but take a moment to appreciate how beautiful she is with nothing but the broad straps of the harness breaking the scar-scattered contours of her skin. He wants her so desperately it hurts.

Her hands smooth down his flanks and over his hips as she kneels between his thighs, her eyes intent and a hint of a flush starting to burn across her cheekbones. He spreads his legs a little wider for her, nothing but eager as he rocks his hips in a shameless plea. A warm smile curls on her lips; she squeezes his hip gently, all steady reassurance, and something achingly soft blossoms in his chest for it. He should feel so vulnerable here like this. But with Billie, he never feels anything but safe and cared for.

A convulsive shudder ripples through him as she grips the base of the dildo again and pulls it out a little to reattach it to the harness. He can’t remember the last time he was left so on edge for so long, so oversensitive that every slightest shift is more overwhelming than he would have thought possible. He doesn’t know if he even can survive being fucked in his current state, but lord, he can’t think of any way he’d rather go.

Billie rolls her hips, slow and shallow, and there’s no calling the noise that’s torn from his throat anything but a sob, eyes shut tight as he tips his head back to gasp for air. His heart is pounding in his chest like a war drum, heat burning feverishly over his skin as lust coils greedily in the pit of his stomach. It’s too much, and all he wants is more.

Cool fingers trace gently over the line of his jaw, and he blinks his eyes open, hazy and unfocused as his gaze meets Billie’s. “You good?” she asks softly, nudging her nose against his.

“Never better,” he murmurs breathlessly, kissing her soft and tender. He rocks his hips tentatively and gives a low moan for it. “Oh darlin’, you feel so good.”

Her eyes are soft as she smiles against his lips, wrapping her arms in around him to cradle him close as she presses a little deeper into him. He shudders and shifts his hips encouragingly, his hands sliding over her body as though he can’t get enough of the feel of her skin under his palms. A meaningless litany of filth and praise falls from his lips with every ragged breath, something softer and warmer than lust blossoming behind his ribcage for the way she shivers and flushes when he calls her beautiful. 

She fucks him slow and deep, wringing desperate noises from him with every languorous thrust until he’s arching and keening under her. He feels dizzy with it, drunk on the pleasure coursing through him. After spending all evening so desperate for release, now that they’re finally here, he finds he doesn’t want it to end.

He was never going to last long, not after the sweet torture he’s been put through; not when Billie knows exactly where to touch and how to move to have him moaning out her name like it’s the only word he has left. His orgasm hits him sudden and blinding as a lightning strike, _howling_ as pleasure wracks him.

A pitiful whimper of a sound falls from his lips as Billie fucks him through it, grinding her hips with purposeful urgency as she chases her own orgasm. He’s still panting as he looks up at her in muzzy awe, fingertips clumsy where they stroke over the lithe shift of her muscles and skim the soft swell of her breasts. He cups a hand tenderly around her cheek; she closes her eyes as she turns her face into the touch, shuddering with a sharp hitch of a breath before finally going still against him.

In the breathless moments that follow, she presses a tender kiss to his palm, quietly affectionate in a way that never fails to warm him to his bones. They express themselves in very different ways; he knows that grand romantic gestures have never been in Billie’s nature. But he’s never felt anything but loved with her. In her matter of fact, understated way, she’s given him more love and care than he’ll ever be able to repay.

Before long though, of course, reality starts to intrude again.Goody shifts slightly against the sheets and gives a small wince. “Much as I hate to break the moment, chérie…”

Billie nods and brushes another kiss over his palm. “I’ve got it,” she murmurs.

Unbuckling the harness goes quickly and easily, mostly by virtue of a great deal of practice. Goody can’t help but hiss out a breath of discomfort between his teeth as she eases the toy out, but familiarity helps here too; after all this time, they know how to handle each other, when they can push and when a little more care is needed. He melts against the mattress with a groan that’s half loss and half relief as the head slips free, so bonelessly spent that the thought of trying to move seems frankly hilarious.

He’s distantly aware of the soft pad of Billie’s feet as she moves around the bedroom, of light spilling in from the en suite bathroom and the rush of running water. For his part, the most he feels capable of is tugging the blankets down and burrowing in under them. The sheets are pleasantly cool against his sweat-damp skin, the familiar scent of home clinging to the pillows wrapping comfortingly around him.

The bathroom light clicks off again, and after a moment the mattress shifts and cool air shivers over his skin as the blankets are pulled aside again. A smile curls on his lips as he blinks sleepily up at Billie, readily curling in close as she settles in against him.

“I’m still taking that key back,” Goody murmurs sleepily against the curve of her neck. He feels more than hears her laugh.

“No repeat performance?” she asks, her fingers tracing abstract patterns down the length of his spine.

“I think, chérie, that I’d rather choose the time and place next time around.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chérie - Darling  
> Mon moitié - My other half  
> Mon âme sœur - My soulmate


	11. Round Four - Bondage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Round four - turn two - by ThrillingDetectiveTales  
>   
> 
> 
> This was supposed to be gratuitous vampire porn but instead it's gratuitous vampire feels, with bonus historical trans!V because that's just where I am right now.
> 
> There _is_ some explicit content and I would like to take this moment to disclaim that V's experiences herein are not meant to unilaterally reflect every trans person's experiences. We all interact with our assigned anatomy differently etc etc.
> 
> Not really edited, because I'm a bit of a lazy fuck, but I hope you like it anyway babes~

“Guero, please,” Ale moaned piteously into the cavernous bedroom that he and Joshua shared. It was on the upper story of an ivy-drenched double-gallery estate, owned by Joshua’s brother and his brother’s lover, who shared the room on the eastern side of the house that mirrored their own. Both of the master suites looked out onto the overgrown garden in the bountiful yard at the back of the house, and this particular evening Joshua had seen fit to crack the windows open and allow the sticky summer breeze to roll through the room, carrying with it the humming trill of any number of insects and birds and other nocturnal vermin.

The man in question was taking his sweet time disrobing while Ale sat waiting on the plush mattress, hunched slightly forward with his legs out in front of him and his hands in his lap, looking as casual as ever except for the way that the weight of frustration had made his spine go rigid and his arms were bound together at the wrist. The heavy iron manacles were separated by a length of chain, built of a few thick links that didn't even allow Ale to move his hands past hips, another, longer stretch winding back behind him and fastening him soundly to the bed. They seemed almost silly, garish when contrasted against the lush, decadent rococo trappings of the space, and they only served to irritate Ale further. He was effectively trapped for the time being - miserable, and keyed up, and _starving_.

His entire body ached with calamitous hunger, muscles in agony, frame wracked with shudders every now and again while his stomach twisted furiously over itself. He felt dizzy and fevered, sweat beading at his temples and crawling down the line of his spine. The thin, fine linen of his blouse clung to what little of his slick skin it could find, gone gauzy and transparent everywhere it touched, while the ridged bones and soft cotton of his undergarment, familiar enough that it wasn’t usually much of a bother, felt oppressively tight, digging into his skin and trapping the heat of his body far too close for comfort.

Joshua didn't look up from where he was casually undoing the buttons of his green velvet jacket, studying himself in a full-length mirror framed with curling, gilt-edged wood like the creature of unabashed vanity that he was. Every now and again the golden embroidery on Joshua’s sleeves, dripping down his lapel, caught the flickering light from the wall sconces, glittering sparks dancing across the delicate threads with every small shift of his wrists and shake of his shoulders.

“Give me a moment, darlin’,” he said easily, in the slow, sloppy-edged drawl he only ever adopted when he knew precisely how irritating he was being and was taking extreme pleasure in that knowledge. “I’d hate to ruin your fine craftsmanship.”

“You spent six months tearing everything I made for you to pieces just to have an excuse to talk to me again,” Ale snarled, since Joshua appeared to have forgotten the embarrassing and inauspicious circumstances of their courtship. Joshua rolled his eyes, unconcerned, and a little lick of fury leapt up through Ale’s chest, hunger winding tight in his belly. He yanked at the manacles - hard enough that the chains threaded through the sinuously twisted bronze posts of the headboard rang out like bells where the links caught, and the bedframe itself rattled thunderously.

“None of that,” Joshua chided, cutting Ale a wicked smirk and a sharp, heated glance from under his eyelashes. The manacles were more of a formality than anything, as they both well knew. Ale had seen Joshua and his fellows tear through iron as if it were little more than tissue, rending it as easily as a sheet of delicate silk. If he were so inclined, Ale could be free of them in a half a thought. He stretched his arms as far apart as he could while the manacles held, savoring the hard bite against his skin, the grind in the bones of his wrists.Tonight, they were serving as a reminder more than anything - a sort of psychological trick to bolster Ale’s strength in riding out the viciously cresting pangs of hunger wracking his body every third breath.

Ale glared mutinously from his position trussed up like a parcel of goods and Joshua let his smirk widen, hot and sweet and full of promise. His eyes seemed to glow in the smoky shadows, moonlight curving thin bars of silver-blue light up the side of his face, stark against the hazy golden glow of the sconces. The curtains would be pulled tight by the time they finally settled into bed in the early dawn, Ale knew. Joshua might be old enough to stumble into a stray patch of sunlight with little beyond a slow-healing burn to show for it, but Ale, who had walked among the dead for a paltry handful of months, would undoubtedly meet a somewhat more decided end were he to make the same error.

“You have to learn to wait it out,” Joshua reminded gently, neatly folding his jacket over the back of a decorative chair, standing sentinel against the elegantly papered wall. He made quicker work of his blouse, turning away as he did so that Ale had full view of the way the muscles in his back and his broad shoulders bunched and rippled. Ale whined in the back of his throat and let himself fall back against the mattress, closing his eyes against the hideous writhe in his abdomen.

“It hurts,” he muttered, small and soft and pained.

“I know,” Joshua sighed, low and quiet after a long moment of mournful silence. “I’m sorry.”

His voice was gentle, drifting along on a sudden swell of breeze that lapped in through the window, brushing tenderly over Ale’s fevered face and pooling at the divots of his collarbone, exposed where his shirt was unbuttoned down to his clavicle. Ale didn't respond - mostly because he knew that no matter how many times he endeavored to absolve Joshua of his guilt, it was dug deep into the very core of his being, anchored in his bones. He still flinched from time to time when he caught sight of the ragged bolt of a scar winding a jagged path up the right side of Ale’s neck. It was vastly different than Joshua’s own damning demarcation - two neat, clean pinpricks an inch or two below the hinge of his jaw on the left - but that was hardly Joshua’s fault. After all, _he_ hadn't been the voracious devil who’d torn Ale’s throat open under the thrall of desperate, vicious hunger. The same hunger that was doing its damnedest to rip Ale apart from the inside now.

Ale took a deep breath in through his mouth, let the heady scents from the garden outside burst over his tongue in a fragrant symphony, sage and starbush and sweet magnolia. He could smell the bitter, metallic tang of the iron at his wrists, the muted dusky mahogany of the hand-carved furniture, and Joshua, too; the fainter notes of his actual scent buried beneath the warm, luscious spice of his cologne.

His heartbeat was _loud_ , which had surprised Ale at first. He’d known that Joshua had a pulse, of course - too many nights spent sprawling out over top of him, cheek to his bare chest while they regained their breath, to leave that question unanswered - but nowadays he could hear it at a distance, seemed somehow aware of it at all times, even through the screaming hunger gnawing at his belly.

He’d asked about it once, both of them fresh off the hunt, senses at their predatory peak and Ale half-hypnotized by the steady beat of Joshua’s heart beneath his ribs, pressing his palm down over top of it and closing his eyes reverently while he breathed, “Why is it so loud?”

Joshua hadn’t known, had seemed surprised by the question and a little uncomfortable when he hazarded his best guess, which was that Ale was somehow tied to him since it had been Joshua’s blood that passed the infection along to him a few sparse moments before he shuffled off this mortal coil for good. Joshua had claimed that he had something similar with Billie. A sort of perpetual knowledge that she was vaguely in any given direction at any given time, although her heartbeat had never especially stood out to him, nothing like the steady tattoo that wriggled its way up underneath Ale’s skin, made him feel dizzy and lightheaded like he’d had too much wine of a night.

A sharp, hot blade of hunger lanced up through his abdomen in a ferocious wave and Ale tensed against it, choking back the pained keen clawing its way up his throat. He startled at the sudden dip of the mattress and the gentle, soothing pressure of a palm along his side, muted and faint through the solid layer of his underclothes. He sighed and opened his eyes to discover Joshua smiling down at him, handsome brow furrowed with concern. A cursory glance revealed that he had managed in the intervening moments to divest himself of the remainder of his wardrobe. He was kneeling next to Ale naked as the day he was born and utterly unapologetic about it, lovely in the low lamplight - all glittering green eyes and soft russet curls gleaming copper at the edges, pale skin drenched in the honey glow of the dancing flames.

“It’s alright, sweetheart,” he murmured, and bent low to press a kiss to Ale’s forehead, his cheek, his jaw. His touch was cool against Ale’s fevered skin, and when he pulled away for a brief second Ale whimpered.

Joshua made a small noise of apology and tugged at the hem of Ale’s shirt, rucking it up and out of the way so that he could trace the path of one of the steel ribs climbing up Ale’s side.

“How are you feeling tonight?” he asked, letting his fingers wander higher still, dragging a feather-light touch across Ale’s sweat slicked collarbone when he reached it, a bare ghost of a sensation that set Ale to shivering while gooseflesh prickled across his shoulders, up his neck. Joshua dipped a finger under the soft silk strap that curved over Ale’s shoulder, hooked the cloth and gave it an affectionate tug, shaking the little tails of the knotted ribbon that secured it at the front. “On or off?”

This had been another surprise, when Joshua’s pleasantly chaotic, hamfisted overtures at courtship had finally worked their way under Ale’s skin, convinced him that it was perhaps worth the risk to more intimately entertain the affections of the green-eyed man who ordered some of the most opulently decadent outfits that Ale had ever had the pleasure of making, only to return them a few days later in tatters, insistent that they be fixed no matter the cost or the time required to accommodate such work. Joshua had been confused, certainly, the first time that Ale stripped bare before him, but also exceedingly gentle. Respectful, too, which had been something of a shock considering his total lack of decorum on every occasion to which Ale had borne prior witness. At the end of it, Ale hadn't been quite certain who was the more surprised out of the two of them - Joshua, to discover that the man after whom he had been inelegantly pining these past weeks was so only through the power of his own creation rather than any blessing of birth, or Ale himself, to have the impossible suspicion that he was on the cusp of bedding a vampire so neatly and inarguably confirmed.

On another night, Ale might have asked to leave the specially crafted corset on, to preserve the illusion that his anatomy leant itself naturally to shape he preferred, rather than being molded to fit through Ale’s own particular breed of sartorial magics. This night, sticky and warm despite the breeze, air heavy and thick with the looming promise of a sweltering morning, everything pressing in too close and catching rough against Ale’s edges, he sighed and said quietly, “Off.”

Joshua nodded, the barest dip of his head, and settled back a bit. The weight of him, the heat of him next to Ale’s fevered form, was an anchor, soothing and calming, the force of his gravity pinning Ale neatly to the mattress and chasing any spare thoughts of escape from his mind. Joshua hooked his grip over the chain between the iron manacles, tugging at it gently and canting his head, thoughtful.

“Need these out of the way,” he murmured, voice husky and low. He tilted his chin up toward the head of the bed. “Lift ‘em up for me?”

Ale, who was not in the habit of taking orders even when they were suggestions - whose stubborn spitefulness in the wake of Joshua’s withdrawal had been something of a key in determining the bloody unpleasantness that had come after, he was more than willing to admit, not that Joshua would ever be keen to reapportion any of that blame beyond his own shoulders - considered this for a long second.

Joshua sighed, and darted down to lay a kiss at the corner of Ale’s suspicious scowl.

“Please?” he pressed quietly. “I won't touch if you don't want me to.”

Ale rolled his eyes, because that had never been in question, and raised his arms up over his head, Joshua lending an absent hand to move the long length of chain securing Ale to the headboard out of the way as he did so.

“Look at you, accommodating my wishes for once,” Joshua grinned, smug and teasing and fond.

Ale snorted, pitching his voice low as he muttered, “Don’t make me regret it, tontito.”

Joshua barked a small, startled laugh and trailed his fingers gently along the lower hem of the corset, embarking on a lazy, cavalier search for the center seam, punctuated by shivers as he pressed soft, probing touches to the thin stripe of Ale’s skin that was exposed above his trousers. When he found what he was looking for, he set about to the methodical task of unlatching the row of tiny hooks with a sort of awed subdual about him. For all that he held no qualms when it came to tearing Ale’s shirts off in pieces, or utterly destroying the exceedingly fine garments that Ale made for him in an increasingly ridiculous number of ways, Joshua had always approached this particular garment - and its handful of twins - with a gentleness that bordered on reverence. He seemed to understand without the necessity of explicit explanation on Ale’s part that this was different, special because it was less an affectation, like the foppish cravats and silk jackets, and more an extension of Ale himself. As the pressure on his belly, on his ribs, gradually dissipated, Ale took a deep breath and closed his eyes. When the last hook was undone, Joshua sighed, soft and overcome, and mapped a slow, meandering path up over Ale’s bare flank with the warm flat of his palm. Ale shivered at the tender drag of Josuha’s calloused fingers, stomach clenching with another vicious pang as he gasped, “Guero.”

“You’re alright,” Joshua assured, low and breathless, thumb trailing along the lowest rungs of Ale’s ribs as he leaned down. “Just gotta keep you occupied, that’s all.” His breath was warm and sweet and familiar, licking in a soft wave against Ale’s mouth while Joshua nudged their noses together, gently guiding Ale into turning his head so that he could capture a kiss.

It was a softer thing than he was generally accustomed to - soft in ways they never were on the nights they fucked after feeding, both of them high on the cresting wave of fresh blood and falling on one another with a fierce and desperate need; softer than Joshua had ever been before he found Ale nearly bled dry in his own storefront, excepting a few times near what Ale had thought was the finite end of their dalliance, when that tender bloom between them had loomed so dauntingly over Joshua that he had cut himself off from it completely.

Ale was lost to the tender press of Joshua’s mouth, the slick, hot slide of his tongue, for long, dizzy minutes. This near, he swore he could feel Joshua’s pulse thrumming in the air between them, tingling against his skin and cutting through the aching gnaw of hunger. He gasped a breath, chasing after the sharp curl of Joshua’s smirk, and Joshua took advantage of his complacency to swing a leg over and settle himself across Ale’s hips.

Ale moaned at the sudden, delicious pressure, and Joshua huffed a little laugh against his mouth.

“Still with me?” he teased.

Ale snapped meanly at him in lieu of vocalizing a response - not hard enough to break skin, despite the fact that he was all fangs at the moment, some predatory instinct blocking any ability Ale might have had to draw them in - and Joshua made a harsh, low sound of want at the biting sting.

He pulled back and put his other hand to Ale’s chest, high on his sternum, pinning him in place while he licked at the abused swell of his lip, slow and entirely too salacious not to be for Ale’s particular benefit.

“Now, now,” he reprimanded with a grin, teeth going long and sharp and wicked in a way that lit a glowing coal in Ale’s belly alongside that damnable hunger. “Play nice or I’ll have to tie you up for real.”

“You’ve never wanted ‘nice’ in your whole damn life, cariño,” Ale shot back, dark and low and certain. Joshua grinned a little wider. His teeth were vicious pearls, gleaming dangerously behind his lush smirk, fingers digging in just a little too hard when he tightened his grip on Ale’s side and rocked his hips. Ale groaned and bucked up into the motion, looking down the line of his body and biting his lip at the sight of Joshua’s cock, flushed dark and thick and already leaking, dragging against the placket at the front of Ale’s fine silk trousers.

“You look good like this,” Joshua groaned, eyes hooded and glittering dark, gazing hungrily down at Ale like he was a feast set before a starving man.

At the thought, Ale’s stomach twisted again, furious and hungry. He sucked a pained breath through his teeth, the sound shifting to a moan when Joshua rutted against him a second time. The friction made Ale’s belly swoop, brilliant starburst of want neatly disrupting the voracious roar in his gut.

“Stay with me, sweetheart,” Joshua murmured, and bent low over Ale for another kiss. This one was possessive, deep and hot and claiming. Ale sighed into it, rocking up in quick, shallow thrusts that made Joshua’s breath catch in his chest while he gasped out a string of needy little noises of desperation. Ale swallowed each one greedily down.

Joshua, ever the king of sly fingers, somehow managed to undo the knots securing the straps of Ale’s corset over his shoulders with only one hand, even while he shuddered and moaned into Ale’s mouth. He made to pull away again, and this time when Ale bit at him, one of his fangs caught on Joshua’s swollen lip, bright copper blooming sudden and lovely and slick across Ale’s tongue.

Joshua hissed, pained, and sat back, glaring down at Ale while he panted a few harsh breaths. There was a rosy flush high on his cheeks, spilling down his throat, his freckled shoulders, his broad chest - that fair Irish complexion belying his desire. Blood beaded in a fat, ruby dark gem, at the center of his lush mouth. The scent of it saturated the air like a choking fog, like thick smoke off a fire burning too large to contain.

Ale stared, mesmerized while Joshua tongued absently at the minor wound, wrinkling his nose a little at the sting, and breathed hazily, “Sorry.”

Joshua considered him for a moment - his gaze was glassy with want, burning dark over his sweetly tilting smirk. He let it curl sharp at the corners and leaned down to kiss Ale again, hard and vicious and slick with the sharp, luscious tang of warm blood. Ale keened and surged up into it, chains rattling overhead while he chased that bright, bitter burst past Joshua’s teeth. Joshua curled his hands over Ale’s arms where they were extended up above him, sinking his weight into it and forcing Ale back down. Ale trembled beneath him, stomach twisting, whole body alive and humming with need. He felt half a breath from shaking apart, even as Joshua gentled their pace, holding Ale still against the monstrous rattle in his bones.

By the time they paused for breath, the little cut had healed over, nothing but a soft red smear to indicate that it had ever been there at all.

Joshua let his forehead rest against Ale’s, eyes closed while he gasped into the slim space between them, breath twining hot around Ale’s desperate, measured pants. He nuzzled at Ale’s cheek, dropped a kiss to the hinge of his jaw, squeezed absently where he still had his hands curled around Ale’s arms before abandoning his grip in favor of tugging the unlaced pieces of the corset off and out from under Ale, casting them carefully away to the far side of the mattress.

He hesitated for a moment after pressing his mouth to Ale’s temple, the soft skin below his ear. He was hot and heavy and solid above Ale, the air around them gone thick and wet with the promise of a summer storm, something crackling electric in the atmosphere.

Ale tilted his head, encouraging, and Joshua bit back a tiny, miserable noise before pressing a kiss to the highest jagged spike of the scar on Ale’s throat. He laved the whole length of it with the flat of his tongue, kisses gone so gentle as to be painful, reverence and sorrow woven together so tightly that they had become one and the same, pulled over Joshua like a damning shroud. Ale shivered, and moaned, and the monstrous hunger stilled.

It was still there, of course - a barbed, messy knot tangled up in his belly - but it seemed so impossibly small under the magnitude of this, of Joshua bowed over him like there was no place he would rather be, like this humbling, bone-deep dedication was something that Ale was owed, rather than the immeasurable gift it actually was.

Joshua’s beard dragged, divine and rough, over the ridge of Ale’s collarbone as he ducked his head. His mouth was hot and reverential where he trailed a little line of searing kisses down Ale’s sternum, careful not to deviate to any parts of Ale’s topography that he would prefer were left unexplored. He spread his broad palms across Ale’s ribs, nuzzled against the high plane of his stomach and asked against his skin, “Still with me?”

Robbed of his general response, which was to tangle a hand in Joshua’s downy curls and yank at them in the way that made Joshua’s eyes go hot and dark and wanting, Ale sighed fondly, “Sí, guero. I’m with you.”

When Joshua glanced up at Ale, he looked half-drugged, all of his features gone soft and hazy with the glow of affection. He dragged a thumb absently across Ale’s ribs and Ale shivered.

“I want to taste you,” Joshua breathed, pressing a kiss just below Ale’s belly button, dipping his fingers carefully past the waistband of Ale’s trousers. Ale took a careful, shaky breath.

“All right,” he agreed, voice gone thin with want. Joshua kissed him again, a little lower this time, tightening his grip and tugging Ale’s slacks down a bit to give himself more room.

“You feeling better?” he asked gently. “Want me to take the chains off?”

Ale considered this for a long moment, Joshua watching him with polite, curious interest.

He _did_ feel better - or at least, the damnable hunger had been banked to a minor irritation rather than an all-consuming ache. He’d been nervous about the shackles at first, certainly, vulnerability not one of the arenas to which his or Joshua’s natural talents were particularly suited, even now that they were effectively committed to one another, but he found that he minded the restraints less than he’d anticipated he would. He _trusted_ Joshua, in more ways than he could rightly say. He had trusted Joshua with his most precious secret, had trusted Joshua at what he had been so certain was the end of his life to do right by him. What was a couple of flimsy iron chains to that steady faith?

“Leave them,” he said, a little breathless.

Joshua arched an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah?”

Ale nodded, and Joshua’s smile sprawled wide - soft, and sweet, and perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always feel free to come flail at me about vampire idiots or trans!V or whatever [over on Tumblr!](http://thrillingest.tumblr.com) Seriously, I know I'm kind of a weird introvert but I welcome interaction, really. <3


	12. Round Four - Spidergag

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round four - turn three - greatdisorder
> 
> It’s the facefuck extravaganza that you’ve all been waiting for! So hopefully this was worth the wait(which is all my fault, I’m sorry, RL has been kicking my ass) and everyone enjoys reading about the headcanon I have that Faraday is a goddamn cockslut because I’m taking that one with me to my grave.
> 
> More or less set in the same mercenary au as my DP prompt because I keep saying I’m garbage and I’m going to prove it. If you want an idea of what a spidergag looks like, [this version](https://s24.postimg.org/3mlr2fx39/5_CM-_Fetish-_Harness-_Restraint-_Open-_Mouth-_O-ring-_G.jpg) is what I’ve had in mind writing this bad boy.
> 
>  **Just an extra note:** I’ve never worn a spidergag or, for that matter, any other kind of gag so I’m just flying by the seat of my pants here. If any of you beautiful deviants out there have first hand experience with this and I’ve gotten something glaringly wrong, hit me up in the comments or privately on tumblr @ b-r-a-h (the artist formally known as lolisyn) so I can fix it.
> 
> What I can say is that the kind of gagging about to happen in this fic is definitely not for beginners and, I cannot stress this enough, if you’re going to start playing around with anything involving taking away your ability to speak(and, consequently, being able to vocalize when you want to stop) please make sure you’re with someone(or someones) you can trust to watch you and check in with you and that you’re setting up a system of communication with your partners to make sure nothing goes too far. (I’m sorry I’m an old fandom aunt who just wants my people to have safe kinky-or-not-kinky sex okay just let me get this out of my system I get worried)
> 
> Not even a little edited because, again, it's late and I'm tired but hopefully you all enjoy it anyway~

There's an unassuming little box sitting pretty on the bed in the master bedroom, dwarfed by the sprawling expanse of mattress it’s perched on, and Faraday arches a brow over his shoulder to find V already grinning widely in response as Goody and Billy slip into the room behind him.

“So much for that rule about gifts, huh?” He says, sounding more put upon than anyone in the room would ever believe, and V rolls his eyes.

“It’s your birthday, guero. _One_ gift. Deal with it.”

As a general rule, Faraday doesn't really like gift giving. At least not when it felt like an obligation, something done as expected on a specified day just ‘cause everyone else seems to think it’s how things should work. Birthdays are easily the worst of all of them, like there’s something all that special about getting popped out of a person and managing the bare requirements of not dying until the Earth finishes its fuck off cycle around the sun. It’s just another day as far as Faraday is concerned, and usually a lot less impressive than all the non-birthday days he’s survived.

V doesn’t really get that. Or Goody, for that matter, but Faraday supposes it’s a different beast when you grow up with people making a big deal out of that kind of thing. Still, he wasn’t prepared for how guilty V and Goody looked the first time they realized Faraday’s birthday passed without acknowledgement, convinced it was something they had to make up for and no amount of Faraday insisting he didn’t give a fuck about it seemed to do the trick of making them feel better. It ended up being frustrating on both sides, ready to swing into an actual argument as Faraday wound himself tighter and tighter, defensive and annoyed and snappish until Billy stepped in.

Billy gets things, sometimes, that V and Goody don’t know how to. They all got histories, fucked up in their own colorful variety of different ways, but he and Billy seem to speak a language the others never had to learn how to. It's something Faraday doesn't think he'll ever stop being grateful for and with Billy's help they came to a compromise in the end, a decision that worked nicely with V and Goody's deep-rooted desire for birthdays to continue to be something special without forcing Faraday to sit through some celebration he doesn't particularly want to be part of.

Mostly it involves indulging the person at the center of it in whatever they want to do when everyone else is squarely on board, gift giving largely optional.

Mostly for Faraday it involves a lot of sex, which probably explains why they're cutting to the chase and starting in the bedroom tonight.

He reaches out for the box, turning it over in his hands with a skeptical look. The wrapping around it is green, probably somewhere in the same family as his eyes, and it leaves him positive V is the one that picked it out like the sappy fuck Faraday knows he is. He tears it open viciously on principle and he can almost feel the sigh V wants to heave behind him. Glinting steel greets him inside, the seamless line of the center O only broken by the legs curving out from two sides, both looped through with sleek black straps that join each other with a buckle. He lifts it from the box, running his thumb over the metal with a crease between his eyebrows until something clicks.

Faraday looks over his shoulder again. “...a gag?” He asks, a little skeptical, and something lights up in the pit of his stomach like wildfire for the way V’s smile goes absolutely _sinful_. 

“Sí, guerito,” he answers, his grin sharp and his eyes glittering, sliding up behind him until Faraday can feel the heat of V's body pressed up against his back. V reaches around him, broad calloused palms skimming along his forearms until his hands are curled around Faraday's own, “a gag.” V nuzzles a kiss to the back of Faraday's ear that makes goosebumps shake out down just about every inch of him and asks, “Do you want me to show you how it fits?”

They've tested the waters with gags before but, like plenty of things they've picked up out of curiosity and tossed into the reject bin when it turned out it didn't work for them, the ones they tried before never made the final cut when there was a unanimous agreement between the four of them that there were better things to stuff Faraday's mouth full of than a rubber ball, but _this_ \--

It's pretty obvious what this particular kind of gag is for and it makes Faraday feel a little like his stomach just dropped out on him. He swallows hard and his voice is barely riding on a breath when he says, “Yeah.”

V plucks it from his hands and presses another kiss to the back of Faraday's neck. “Turn around, cariño. Open your mouth for me.”

His skin flushes hot, betraying him even earlier in the game than usual, and he tries to drag some of his sense back before he loses it completely. “Don’t you think you’re gettin’ a little ahead of yourself, darlin’?” He answers with a little grin as he turns, eyebrows raised. “Maybe I wanna see a little skin first.” He strips his shirt off as he says it like the extra hint was ever needed, pleased as a peacock to show off the bare broadness of his shoulders and the scar-scattered expanse of his chest. His grin widens, and he hooks his thumbs into the waist of his jeans. “C’mon now. Sharin’ is carin’.”

V catches him by the chin instead, quick as lightning striking, his fingers digging in on the right side of hurting, and Faraday’s breath catches when V’s thumb traces the lush line of his mouth, nearly pressing the digit between his lips. “Open.” He says again, the undercurrent of an order tucked up into the corners of his words, and Faraday has the overwhelming urge to sink his teeth into the tender meat of V's hand for it even when it makes his cock twitch. 

His expression darkens like thunder clouds rolling in on a sunny day, glaring until V squeezes a little harder as he watches Faraday with those dark, bottomless eyes and the kind of smirk better suited to a hungry wolf, and as much as some part of him rebels at the idea of obeying no matter how many times they find themselves here, the smarter probably-hardwired-straight-to-his-dick part of him knows the payoff at the end is always worth it. His eyes narrow as he unclenches his jaw, mouth opening, and somehow V's eyes go even darker.

“See? Not so hard.” Any sharp retort Faraday might have been inclined to give is neatly cut off by V gently maneuvering the ring in place, forcing Faraday’s mouth even wider as V settles it up carefully behind his teeth. Heat blooms like a bomb detonation in his belly, violent and swift, eating up through him until he feels like he can't breathe around it, and Faraday can feel the flush in his face flaring hotter, burning down his chest and fanning across his shoulders for the way his mouth feels stretched open like this. The metal, unsurprisingly, doesn't give even a fraction of an inch and if he wasn't fully hard before it only takes V buckling the gag securely in place to leave him aching.

V follows the line the the straps back along his cheeks, his fingertips dragging along the scruff of his beard with a tenderness that sends shivers shaking through him like electric licks of lightning, digging up under his ribs and making it hard to breath, and he doesn't realize how tightly he's got one hand fisted in the front of the other man's shirt until V is covering it with his one. V’s other cups easily over his cheek, stroking soothingly over what skin he can reach as he presses his lips to Faraday's temple. “Still okay, guero?”

Faraday nods without hesitation, relaxing under the tenderness being angled his way as easy as breathing, before nearly jumping out of his skin when lips brush over the back of his neck. A hand comes up around his flank, fingers fanning out over his ribs, and squeezes gently. “It’s okay.” Billy’’s voice is steady and familiar as it curls around him, the warmth of his breath at Faraday’s nap sending a shiver crawling down his spine. Billy presses another kiss to his back, nuzzling at the space just above one shoulder blade, and his hand slides down to curl around the cut of Faraday’s hip. He hooks his chin on Faraday’s shoulder, quiet for a moment before asking, straightforward as ever, “cuffs tonight?”

Arousal drops like lead into the pit of his stomach just for the thought, twisting into something not wholly pleasurable for the thought of being restrained with the gag already in place but--

Fuck. Fuck, but he _trusts_ them, is the thing, and he knows that if he lets them, he’ll be safe. He knows that if it’s something he wants, it’ll be okay.

And he does want it, suddenly and overwhelmingly, because the thought of being so totally at the mercy of their whims presses a whole lot of buttons all at once that Faraday has never known what to do with. He nods once, moving his hands behind him, because _of course_ Billy already took the time to grab the restraints before he bothered asking. Efficiency has always kind of been his thing.

Billy's touch is infinitely gentle on Faraday’s skin, fingertips trailing featherlight down his arms in a way that shakes shivers through him until Billy reaches his wrists. The cuffs are heavy, made of thick leather and lushly lined to protect whoever wears them, connected together by a short line of chain strong enough to withstand even the kind of abuse Faraday can put them through, and his heart skips a beat for the first one being secured over the line of his wrist, crawling a little higher in his throat when Billy pulls his arms closer together to get the second one in place. His thumbs trace the tender skin just above the leather, making Faraday shiver again, and makes a soft considering noise. “Too tight?”

Faraday shifts his arms, testing how much they bite, how much give he has, and shakes his head. It’s small but sure and it’s enough to satisfy Billy. He tugs the chain connecting Faraday's wrists once gently, playfully, and sounds amused when he addressed V over Faraday’s shoulder. “What was that he was saying about more skin?”

A grin splits across V’s face and when he laughs it’s warm and sweet, curling into some tender place inside of Faraday’s chest, and reaches for the button of Faraday’s jeans. “Sound good to you, amor?” He asks, as if Faraday would ever object to shameless nudity, and seems fine with taking Faraday’s eyeroll as permission enough to help get his jeans off him.

V's eyes sweep over him once Faraday kicks them away, dark with lust as he takes the time to appreciate every bare inch of him and says, without room for argument, “Knees.” The deep rumble of his voice is already roughened with want, and Faraday’s mouth goes impossibly dry for it, his heart beating a desperate tattoo in his throat as he slowly lowers himself down to the carpet. He can only imagine what he has to look like, all lust-flush skin with his hands bound, stripped down with his mouth opened up like an invitation, and it drags a hard shiver down his spine, arousal flaring hot and fresh in his blood, to be reminded exactly how vulnerable he is right now. V’s hand falls to the buckle of his belt and Faraday feels transfixed as he follows the motion, watching like a cobra after its charmer as V makes a show of slowly stripping it off before dropping it to the floor next to him. He thumbs at the button of his jeans with a wicked smile and the drag of his zipper sounds abrasively loud in the otherwise quiet of the room. 

All at once he’s aware of the weight of Goody and Billy’s gaze on them and it takes everything he has in him not to turn his head to see at the twin looks of hunger no doubt being leveled their way for himself. Call him shameless but he’s never been against putting on a show, especially not when it’s the three people currently sharing the room with him. Not when it’s people he trusts like he trusts them.

Fuck, especially not when he’s so viscerally reminded by how much control V has, standing over him the very picture of put together even with his jeans loose at his hips, and it takes every ounce of self control Faraday has not to lose the desperate noise of want trying to crawl up out of his throat when V pulls the hard length of himself free, stroking himself with slow, lazy passes of his palm with a look in his eyes that says he knows _exactly_ what it’s doing to Faraday to not be able to touch him until he allows it before stepping closer. 

There’s absolutely no stopping the low noise of approval that works out of his throat as V finally slides into his mouth, his cock a heady weight teasing over his tongue and the way his fingers curl a little more tightly into Faraday's hair enough to turn the fine tremor in his muscles into full body shudder. He arches into it, eager in a way he would have been ashamed of not all that long ago, that he would have been _furious_ for when it leaves him so wanton and desperate and caught up twisting in his need as surely as a kite lost to a storm. V rocks his hips forward, swearing breathlessly in Spanish, and all Faraday can do is groan in answer, low and heartfelt as his eyes flutter closed and he presses the flat of his tongue up against the underside of V’s dick on the next shallow thrust into his mouth.

It's on instinct that he tries to move, wanting to steady himself with his hands at V’s hips, wanting to dig his fingers into the meat of his strong thighs, but the cuffs immediately bring him up short. The leather bites into wrists, the chain connecting them snapping taut with a sharp metallic sound, and the hard pulse of pleasure it drags through him makes him shake. V groans above him, his voice gone deep and ragged at the edges, and fucks into Faraday’s mouth a little deeper, a little rougher. “Guero.” V’s fingers tighten in his hair, pulling his head back just a little, as his other hand slides along the line of his jaw. “Look at me.”

He feels like he’s burning up from the inside out, every thrust of V’s dick sending fresh licks of fire up through him, stoking the blaze inside of him into something too wild and unwieldy to be contained. Faraday makes a soft noise of protest and V’s fingers press into the hinge of his jaw a little, the bite of almost-pain making Faraday shiver. “Guerito.”

V is a long, lean line up over him when Faraday opens his eyes, his jeans opened up loose at the fly and his shirt clinging in all the right ways to the trim line of his body. A few curls have slipped over his ears with the bow of his head, brushing over the attractive flush high on his cheeks, and Faraday feels a little like he could drown in the hot depths of those eyes pinning him in place. He’s never prepared for everything he finds in V’s eyes like this, everything layered under the burning want and hunger in them, softer and more tender than Faraday thinks he’ll ever know what to do with, and when V sighs sweetly, stroking his thumb over Faraday’s cheek like he’s the most exquisite thing he’s ever had in his hands, and presses deeply into his throat, it all peaks into the kind of too-much-not-enough that sends him careening right over the edge.

Faraday’s orgasm hits him like a gunshot, fast and startling, leaving him bucking up against nothing but air when he comes with a choked, desperate noise around V’s dick. There’s a quiver in his thighs already, a tremor that seems to roll up right through his bones as pleasure shakes through him to engulf everything else. He knows V is close. Faraday can tell by the possessive way his grip goes too tight, by the uneven thrusts that press V deep into his mouth, and the only warning he gets that V is about to tip right over with him is the noise that sounds punched right out of V, broken and desperate, before he comes in a bright burst over Faraday’s tongue.

He can’t swallow. Not all of him, not with the gag holding his mouth open like it is, and Faraday can feel it trickling out around V’s cock, spit and come cutting a hot, slick path down his chin as V gently eases out of his mouth, and he's not prepared for V’s thumb to gently cut through the mess clinging to his bottom lip, to tilts his chin up until their eyes meet and breathe out, “You’re beautiful.” It’s soft and reverent like V is imparting some awestruck truth and it makes Faraday feel like his chest has just been ripped open, exposing the shuddering beat of his heart and every half-formed secret tucked into it to the open air. He yanks his chin free from V’s grip before his face can give anything more away than it hasn’t already, head bowed against the soft worn material of V’s jeans while he tries to catch his breath.

“He’s right, mon chou.” It comes curling softly through the air behind him and Faraday shudders as Goody’s fingertips dance over the curve of his spine, threading gently through the hair at the base of his neck. Unlike V he’s already stripped down, bare flashes of pale skin as he comes up along the periphery of Faraday’s vision, and he looks up just in time to watch Goody lean up to catch V’s mouth in a slow, tender kiss before murmuring against V's lips, “Mind if I cut in?” Goody's tone is warm and playful and Faraday might have tried to laugh at the ridiculousness of it if the sight of the two of them above him didn’t make a sharp bolt of lust spike inside him like a lightning strike. V snorts out a sound that has no right to be as attractive as it actually is and dips his head to give Goody another long, sweet kiss, grinning fondly when he pulls away to make room. “Of course, bonito.”

Goody smiles after him before turning his attention to Faraday, grinning softly down at him as fingers slide sweetly through Faraday’s hair to give it a playful, teasing tug. There’s the kind of fond warmth in his eyes that makes Faraday’s chest ache a little, all tangled up with lust and the kind of look Goody normally gets looking at a particularly compelling work of art, and Faraday doesn’t think he’ll ever know what to do with it except let it wash over him like something physical, something strong enough to drag him right under and never let him back up. “Do you want more?” 

His jaw aches already, a twinge growing steadily into something sharper the longer the ring behind his teeth keeps him opened up, but the low simmering heat in the pit of his stomach says everything Faraday needs to make his decision, sparking hot and fresh for the idea of Goody using him however he prefers. He nods, a tiny too-eager jerk of his head, and above him Goody smirks like the cat that caught the canary _and_ the cream chaser. He’s already hard, the flush curve of his cock curving proudly upward, and Faraday would be a liar if he said that his mouth wasn’t watering for it, leaning up a little when Goody takes himself in hand to guide his dick into the velvet heat of Faraday’s mouth.

The noise he makes mirrors the one that winds out of Goody, a low, heavy groan of pleasure when Goody drags against his tongue that twists into a desperate whine when Goody’s fingers tighten in his hair. “Oh, chéri,” he breathes, rocking forward with slow, easy rolls of his hips, “you can’t imagine how wonderful you feel.”

There’s a shift in the air before someone is kneeling in behind him, warm and solid and big, and Faraday can tell it’s V even without the telltale rumble of his voice, lips brushing Faraday’s ear only seconds before V’s reaching between them to drag slick fingers along the cleft of his ass, teasing up against his hole, and asks, “what do you think, guero?”

Faraday arches into it with a broken little keening noise he’d be embarrassed by if not for the way want slams into him like a bus and above him Goody’s breath catches hard, hips shuddering forward until Faraday nearly chokes on his dick before gasping out, “ _Billy_.” When he looks up Goody’s head is tipped back, a flush burned all the way down the beautiful length of his throat, and all he can see of Billy is his arm up around Goody’s chest, hand spread over the beat of Goody’s heart as he holds him in place, and it doesn’t take a genius to know that he and V obviously have the same idea planned out. V’s arm comes up around him in a mirror to Billy’s, holding him tightly like he knows exactly how close Faraday feels to his thighs giving out, and he must have stripped off just after Goody took his place at Faraday’s mouth because the whole length of him is a hot weight up against his back, nothing but bare skin against skin, and goosebumps break out over him in a tidal wave over when the scruff of V’s beard drags against his neck with the kiss V leaves just below his ear. 

He has no doubt he’d be begging if he could, needy and desperate without a fuck to give about anything but _more_ and ready to do anything he needs to so he can get it. He grinds his hips back greedily for the press of V’s fingers instead, groaning around Goody’s dick like it's been ripped out of him and silenced only by the thick press of Goody sliding into his throat the same time V works two fingers into him just on the right side of too-rough that he knows Faraday likes best. V has always taken a particular kind of pride in knowing exactly how to tease Faraday, pinning him in that desperate, maddening space between too much and not enough with every slow drag of his fingers, with every clever curl of them that hits Faraday in the spot that makes him shake like he’s coming apart at the seams, and by the time V finally, _finally_ , presses a third finger into him he’s almost sobbing around Goody’s cock, half hard and twitching as a fat drop of precome drools from head of his dick. 

“Cher, _please_.” It’s barely a whisper above him, mirroring every coherent thought in Faraday's head, Goody’s voice straining like it’s taking everything he has not to let it break apart, and Billy must decide to take mercy on him because the next second Goody's grip goes white knuckle tight in Faraday’s hair, groaning deep and ragged as his legs shake and his hips jerk. 

Faraday isn’t so lucky. The only thing his raw whimper seems to do is slow V down until every slow thrust of his fingers feels like torture, pressing up into him impossibly deep, and he feels like he’s losing his goddamn mind.

He reaches back to grab V as the cuffs let him, digging his nails viciously into V’s skin in a warning and a plea, keening sharply when V sinks his teeth into tender line of Faraday’s throat to suck a deep, dark bruise over the wild flutter of his pulse. “Be kind, cariño.” His voice sounds as wrecked as Faraday feels, low and graveled and breathless, and he curls his fingers until Faraday sobs for it, arching greedily into it like he can’t get enough. “And maybe I’ll let you come again.”

He’s dizzy, reeling hard between the perfect drag of V’s fingers inside of him and the unsteady thrusts into his mouth from Goody while Billy fucks into him, and Faraday can barely make out the voices around him over the rushing in his ears, exclamations of pleasure and filth and praise wrapping in around him so tight that he feels like he can barely breathe. It’s good. Fuck, it’s _amazing_ , just on the edge almost too much when every thrust into his mouth setting a fresh wave of fire lighting up inside his veins, when V is mouthing a filthy litany of praise along the curve of his ear, and when V finally gives him what he wants, when he finally eases his fingers out to line the slick, hot head of his cock up against him, when he finally slides into Faraday in one smooth stroke until he’s buried to the hilt, Faraday is pretty sure he hits nirvana.

Once, not all that long ago, Faraday could have never imagined that this was something he could enjoy, opened up bare and vulnerable. Once he would have killed any asshole with enough balls to suggest he’d get off on being _used_ like this but now that he’s here, caught up between them as Goody and V find a rhythm together to pull him apart, drowning under every crashing wave of pleasure that threatens to overwhelm him and happy to never have to come up for air again, it’s hard to believe he’d ever be against it.

It’s also fucking _laughable_ to think he could ever hold on for long even with one orgasm under his belt when they’re doing their level best to absolutely take him apart. Goody fucks his mouth rough and uneven, any finesse he may have had otherwise dismantled by every hard snap of Billy’s hips that sends him deep into Faraday’s throat while V fucks him with the kind of bruising possessiveness that Faraday never fails to come apart for, grinding greedily down onto the deep press of his cock with pitiful, desperately broken sounds barely able to shake out around Goody’s dick. 

He can feel it building, molten heat pooling at the base of his spine and his heart pounding out a war drum beat in the hollow of his throat and bright sparks of electricity lighting up every nerve ending he owns, leaving him whining and shaking between them, moving his hips desperately to get V to fuck him harder, to fuck him deeper, to--

Goody’s grip in his hair twists so tight that it hurts, swearing fiercely above him as he thrusts deeply enough into Faraday’s to make his eyes water as he comes and all at once Faraday’s entire world goes _white_.

He's scream if he could when his second orgasm rips through him, choking on it around Goody’s dick as he bucks back hard against V to ride out the pleasure screaming through his veins. V fucks him through it, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise as he drives up into him until Faraday whines, and when V comes it's with a growl, barely muffled by the way he sinks his teeth into the curve of Faraday’s shoulder as he buries himself deep with one last hard thrust, the only thing keeping Faraday up is the iron bar support of V’s arm around his chest. Goody eases carefully from his mouth once he can scrape himself together enough to think to, his hands cupped gently around Faraday’s face as he sinks shakily down to his knees before him, flush and breathless and looking at Faraday a little like he's in awe before leaning forward to press a tender kiss to Faraday’s forehead as Faraday sinks into strong line of V's body behind him like he couldn't support his own weight even if he wanted to.

“Mon chou,” Goody murmurs, fingers following the straps of the gag to the buckle. “You are _incredible_.”

Faraday can only shiver in response, pliant and sated, while Goody works the back of the gag open for him before carefully easing the ring free from Faraday’s mouth. His jaw aches and it's even more apparent once he can work it a little, clenching and unclenching his teeth while V frees his hands. “How was it?” V asks softly, nuzzling in a gentle, lazy kiss to the reddened bitemark he left behind in Faraday’s skin, and Faraday's breath catches.

“Mm.” It's barely a hum, voice hoarse and wrecked as he sinks back into him a little more bonelessly, and he feels he should get a clap on the back for being able to make any sound in response at all. Billy appears with one of the soft washcloths from the bathroom in hand, kneeling down next to Goody to gently wipe away the mess clinging to his skin while Faraday tries to remember how words work again. Billy and Goody take their time checking him over while he focuses on catching his breath, dusting kisses over the red lines the straps left behind along his cheeks and over the lush, swollen curves of his lips and rubbing careful fingers over where the binds bit too harshly into his wrists, and even after months of this, even when it's not _new_ , Faraday doesn't know how he'll ever believe he’s really worth how much care they want to take with him. He sighs softly, tipping his head back against V's shoulder, and murmurs, “S’good.”

“Happy birthday, guero.” V says, sounding too damn pleased with himself as he nuzzles against Faraday's ear, dropping a kiss to the hinge of his jaw. “Not such a bad gift, hm?”

“Terrible.” He says, not even trying to stop the soft grin from cutting across his mouth. “The worst. S'the shittiest birthday I've ever had.”

He hears Billy snort, Goody’s dramatic sigh following at its heels, and when V tilts his chin to steal a kiss, only biting at his mouth a little in retaliation, Faraday’s pretty sure not a damn thing could make this night better.


	13. Round 5 - Polyamory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round five - turn one - by [thesummoningdark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSummoningDark)
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> Sorry for the delay! I was off work sick most of last week, and a little too delirious to be trying to write something coherent. Hopefully this one being longer than any of my previous fills makes up for it a little...
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> "Bonnie" is a play on "bon nuit", because I think I'm funny.
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> ETA: Apparently I win this round! We're going to finish out the board though, because we can.

The first thunderstorm-fat drops of the coming deluge are just starting to patter heavily onto the dry sidewalk as Sam walks up to the bar, a hint of a cool breeze carrying the dark rainclouds along with it and stealing the stifling edge from the warm air. The flickering neon sign over the door buzzes faintly, its glow muted beside the hazy golden light of sunset, as he passes underneath.

He glances around the dimly lit room, mostly out of force of habit, but he knows he’s early; it’s not a surprise to see no familiar faces. He heads up to the bartop, puts his card down to open a tab, and comes away with two modestly priced imported beers. In deference to the company he’ll be keeping as much as his own preference, he chooses a booth against the back wall with a clear line of sight on the door from both sides.

Taking a long pull from the bottle, he gives a low sigh and settles more comfortably into the worn faux-leather of the seat. It’s been a hell of a long day topping off a hell of a long week, and after that, the thought of spending a few hours unwinding in the company of an old friend sounds a little like heaven.

It’s a consequence of getting older, he supposes, that friendships fade and people drift apart. Careers advance and families happen, and as time slips by it’s startlingly easy to pass years without seeing people who were once daily fixtures. For all it feels like a loss though, more than anything else it shows which friendships were real; which ones can be picked up again right where they left off, years falling away in easy conversation and the sound of a familiar laugh.

Cooler air spills into the bar along with the sound of falling rain as the door swings open again; Sam glances up from his beer and smiles for the sight of Bonnie strolling in like she owns the place, scattering raindrops like confetti behind her from the hem of her dripping coat. An answering smile spreads across her face as she spots him where he’s already pushing his beer aside and moving to stand.

Somehow it’s still a surprise every single time, how small she is against him when he catches her in a tight hug. She has a dramatic flair for making an audience of everyone around her when she wants to, taking up all space in a room by sheer force of personality, that makes it easy to overlook her rather modest stature. He knows a thing or two himself about commanding the attention of a crowd, of course, but he’s never had Bonnie’s penchant for theatrics.

Her eyes are warm as she pulls back enough to survey him. “Sam Chisholm,” she says, her smile turning soft as she shakes her head. “It’s been too long.”

“You say that every time,” he replies, settling back into his seat. 

Bonnie snorts inelegantly, shedding her sodden coat and draping it over the high back of the booth to dry. “Because it always is.”

“That should be easier fixed now that it has been,” he says, sliding the untouched second beer across the table toward her as she sits.

“I’d hope so.” She takes a long sip from the bottle and makes a low noise of appreciation. “How are you settling in?”

“Well, I’m not in Kansas any more…” Sam says with some solemnity, only to grin when Bonnie groans and wrinkles her nose at him. “So far, pretty good. I’m still mostly in boxes, but work’s going well. The precinct seem glad just to have someone in charge again. They’ve been in limbo a long while.”

Bonnie laughs. “And here I was expecting to hear thrilling tales of you knocking heads together and whipping the place into shape.”

“Maybe next week,” Sam replies with a shrug. “I think I’ll finish unpacking first.”

From there the conversation wanders off into more trivial details of catching up, talking books and movies and mundane little snippets of daily life. Bonnie insists on buying the next round of drinks, and in the end they opt to alternate. She only becomes more flamboyantly animated as they work their way through the next few bottles. It’s another sharp reminder of just how much time has passed, how much things have changed; it shouldn’t be strange any more to see her so cheerfully gregarious after a few drinks, but he still remembers her as a maudlin drunk.

It’s good to see her so much happier than she had been when they’d parted ways all those years ago. But he’s not in the habit of lying to himself, and in the privacy of his own thoughts, he can admit to the pang of distant, wistful disappointment he can’t help but feel for the knowledge that any part he played in that change was minor. They’d had such naive dreams, once upon a time, of being enough to help each other get over the past. He doesn’t regret the ways they both separately found to move on, in the end, but there’s something bittersweet in knowing that the _they_ they’d once been is in the past too.

His eyes drift down to the gold band around her finger, and he can’t help but poke at the old wound in some stubborn attempt to prove to himself that it’s healed over. “How’s Billy?”

“Stoic as ever,” Bonnie replies. “Good. Things are good.” She takes a sip of her drink, her smile turning soft as she shakes her head. “It’s hard to believe it’s been almost five years. It all still seems a little too good to be true.”

The silence draws out for a long moment, broken only by the distant chatter of the few other patrons in the bar and the muted rattle of rain against the windows. Bonnie gives him a considering look over her drink. There’s something in her eyes that he’s not entirely sure how to read.

“What about you?” she asks. “Anyone special in your life?”

Sam snorts. “I’ve been here a week, Bonnie. This is the first night since I got here I haven’t spent moving boxes around.”

The grin she gives him is that of a woman who’s plotting something. “Well we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

They call it a night reasonably early by their old standards, even managing to close out their respective tabs and leave of their own accord before the bar staff start politely ejecting people. The storm has rained itself out by the time they step out into the amber light of the streetlamps, the moon occasionally peeking between the shreds of scudding clouds high above. The air is cool and wet, wind snatching at their coats, as they part ways under the neon glow of the bar sign with sincere promises to meet again soon. Time will tell how well they hold to that.

Knowing Bonnie as he does, he’d planned on being in no fit state for driving to be a good idea by the end of the night. The main road is a short walk away, and from there it’s a simple matter of a few minutes of patience to hail a cab home. 

The house is dark when he walks up the driveway, of course; the hallway, dimly lit by strips of moonlight, is the same mess of half-emptied boxes it had been when he left. It’s not the most inviting sight, especially after an evening of conversation and laughter. But a house half-unpacked never feels much like a home. Time will take care of that too.

He opens the fridge and stares contemplatively at the case of beer on the bottom shelf for a long moment before sighing, closing the door again, and turning to the sink to pour a glass of water instead. He’s too old to play games with hangovers when they feel more and more like they’re capable of playing the starring role of “cause of” on a death certificate. 

The clouds pass overnight, and the next morning dawns bright and clear, the previous day’s rain a distant memory under the warm sunlight. It’s the first morning since the move that Sam hasn’t had to get up at the crack of dawn and head into work. Habit won’t allow him much of a long lie, but he makes a damn good go of it until a growing need for coffee wins out. 

He takes the mug out to the back porch and sits on the steps with it once it’s brewed, enjoying the sunlight and the cool morning air. The house feels more like a home with the finches singing in the scrubby trees, cars cruising past as the neighbourhood kids shriek and yell in the distance, than it had in the stillness of night. There’s not much to it, but the backyard’s an inviting space. It could really be something with a little work.

After coffee and breakfast, he turns his attention back to business. The piles of boxes dwindle remarkably quickly once he has a free weekend to unpack instead of making token attempts in the evenings after he gets home from work, and by the end of the day on Sunday, the place looks a hell of a lot like someone actually lives there.

One of the last things unpacked is the sole family photo he has left, tattered edges from the years it spent tucked into the pocket of a tac vest hidden by its frame. He carefully unfolds the bubble wrap and brushes the dust from the glass before placing it on the mantelpiece.

Work, when he returns on Monday morning, is much the same: patiently chipping away at the mountain ahead of him until it starts to feel a little less insurmountable. It helps that for all the setting might be different, the job of a police captain is much the same anywhere. It involves a great deal of harassing underlings about paperwork, and being stoically Not Mad Just Disappointed in their general direction until they’re willing to at least give the appearance of caring about proper procedure. Long periods of paperwork punctuated with occasional bursts of chaos.

Weeks stretch out and he settles into a routine, shuttling from home to work and back via an expanding roster of locations in his new neighbourhood. It’s always a touch lonely washing up somewhere new and having to work out how to put down roots, but it helps that Bonnie’s as good as her word, texting a few times a week to invite him to dinner or to arrange drinks. If he’d thought years fell away when they saw each other again after so long, it’s nothing to how it feels to be spending time together regularly again. 

It catches him strangely in some wistful way sometimes, when they’re leaned in close in some booth in a dimly lit bar, talking and laughing, just drunk enough to be warm and comfortable. They haven’t spent this much time in each other’s company in a very long time; not since they finally admitted to themselves that back then they were doing themselves more harm than good by clinging to what they had. Decades on, the sting of their low points has faded. The more time they spend together now, the more he finds himself dwelling on the bittersweet memory of the good times.

Apparently he isn’t the only one.

“Do you ever think about how it might have been if things were different?” Bonnie asks him, one night when they’re a few drinks deeper than they really should be on a random Tuesday when they both have work in the morning.

Sam frowns at her. “Different how?”

“If...I don’t know.” She’s toying with her glass, her gaze avoiding his. “If we met now, when things aren’t so raw any more. If there weren’t all that baggage.”

“If we met now, you’d still be married,” Sam replies with a snort, shaking his head.

Bonnie purses her lips, tracing her fingers over her wedding band. “No,” she says. “No, I don’t think I would be. I…” She finally glances up at him, something he doesn’t know how to read in her expression. “I don’t think I could have made it that far, without you.”

Sam is silent, something constricting painfully in his chest as he stares into his drink. It was a long time ago now, but he still remembers all too clearly those empty days when they had precious little else beside each other and their demons. They’d been young and lost and too tangled in their own hurts to do much else for each other than be there, but...some days, some endless nights, that was enough. It was better than being alone.

He doesn’t know what it would have looked like if they had been alone. Maybe they would have made it through and maybe they wouldn’t, but either way, he’s glad never to have had to find out.

Something seems to change in their interactions after that, some subtle tension rising a little closer to the surface. There’s an expectant air to the lulls in conversation, the sense of something hanging unsaid. Maybe it’s all in his head. But he swears sometimes he sees Bonnie watching him in quiet moments, her expression thoughtful, like some part of her wants to ask a question she isn’t sure how to put voice to.

He’d be a liar if he tried to claim he’d never thought about where they might have ended up if things had gone just a little differently. He’s as sure now as he was then that they did the right thing by going their separate ways - they probably should have done so sooner than they did - but now and then he lets himself indulge in wondering how things might have gone if they’d managed to stick it out.

Common sense says it probably would have been bad. Things wouldn’t have got better if they’d let their issues keep feeding into each other, and he knows they’re lucky to have been honest enough with themselves to call it quits while they could still be friends, before bitterness and resentment could build up. They did the right thing.

Even knowing that, he can’t help but wonder sometimes what he’d need to have done differently to not be going home alone to an empty house.

It’s not the house’s fault he doesn’t have much to put in it, but the emptiness of it only seems all the more stark when he’s coming home from an evening at Bonnie’s after one of her frequent invitations to dinner. It’s an eclectically furnished place; cushions and blankets in rich colours scattered over the furniture, mismatched shelves overflowing with books, and wildly overgrown plants spilling from the windowsills and cluttering the top of the battered old upright piano. The inhabitants’ personalities are written over every inch of it. 

He’d gone round the first night fully prepared to make his excuses early if third wheeling became too excruciating, but apparently he wasn’t the only stray they’d taken in. They seem to have company in the evenings more often than they don’t. A few faces show up more often than others; some of them, like the stylishly dressed and rakishly unshaven younger man who introduces himself with some charm as Ale, a colleague of Bonnie’s, are new. Others, such as Ale’s boyfriend Josh, he’s quite sure he’s seen wash up in the precinct on a drunk and disorderly at least once already.

He really didn’t intend to end up spending so much time at their place, but it’s a comfortable, inviting space. And it’s hard to find reasons to decline Bonnie’s invitations when he’s never made to feel anything but welcome there. The nagging conviction that it can’t possibly be anything but awkward fades rapidly after the first evening he passes with them, lulled into ease by the familiar, thoughtless way the stream of Bonnie’s stories ebbs and flows around the still pools of Billy’s quiet.

Maybe in some ways this would be easier if he could bring himself to resent Billy, but damned if he doesn’t like the man. There’s a calm steadiness to him that lends itself well to an undemanding, companionable kind of shared silence. It’s a rare quality, and one that makes a person disarmingly easy to be around. He has a hell of a sly, understated sense of humour too. It’s a thing of beauty watching him bring Josh stumbling up short with nothing but a pointed comment.

Even if he were inclined to be petty, it would be hard to hold on to any resentment when he’d have to be blind not to see how happy Bonnie is. The old shadows are still there, but she seems lighter now, not so weighed down by them any more. He recognises the soft disbelief in her eyes, that of a person numbed enough to misfortune that they can hardly wrap their head around having been given something good.

It’s always easy to be there with them. The problem is heading back to his own darkened house, where the empty silence leaves too much room for doubts to creep in. There’s a creeping kind of guilt that always follows on the heels of the wistful envy he can’t help but feel for the life she moved on and made without him. It only digs its claws in deeper when he finds himself automatically leaning in closer when she settles in beside him on the sofa, when he notices himself unthinkingly reciprocating affectionate touches. Even if Bonnie’s tactile nature makes it difficult to keep his distance, he doesn’t want to overstep.

Everything else aside, Bonnie is still his closest friend. He’s happy for her. What they had will always have a special place in his heart, but he can accept that it’s in the past.

He comes to look forward to the spontaneous invitations, his day always brightening a little for the prospect of dinner or a quiet drink after work; after a while it becomes pure habit to send back a short affirmative without a second thought. Eventually he stops second guessing himself. There’s no point in fretting about how it might look, how close he and Bonnie still are, when it doesn’t seem to be an issue for anyone else.

He was in the habit anyway of keeping a change of clothes in his car, but it sees a lot more use nowadays, changing out of his uniform in the locker room before driving over to Bonnie’s for dinner. They never seem to want for a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but he picks up a bottle of wine on his way over anyway. Some old ingrained sense of manners won’t let him show up a meal someone else cooked empty-handed.

He’s greeted by a muffled “it’s open!” from within when he knocks at the door. He lets himself in, the hallway beyond remaining empty as he closes the door behind him. The sounds of movement lead him through to the kitchen; Bonnie glances up from where she’s vigorously stirring a shallow, bubbling pan with a smile.

“Couldn’t step away from the stove,” she says, a touch apologetically. “Help yourself to a drink, chéri, there’s plenty in the refrigerator.” 

“I brought wine.” He’s already moving to pull glasses out of a cupboard, nearly as familiar with Bonnie’s kitchen as he is with his own. “Billy not home?” he asks, casting a glance down the hallway.

“He’s at Josh and Ale’s tonight,” Bonnie replies absently, peering intently into the pan. “I think this is ready. Ah, thank you—” She accepts the wine glass he hands her with a theatrical little half-bow of gratitude, grinning as she toasts him with it. “Would you mind setting the table, cher? I’ll be through with the food in just a minute.”

Dinner is excellent as always, and while the wine he’d selected more or less at random probably doesn’t pair particularly well with it, the food and company are too good for him to care. Afterwards they leave the dishes to soak in the kitchen sink, and settle in on one of the well-worn sofas in the front room to finish working their way through the wine. Normally he’d decline after a glass or two, but on a Friday night it’s not a problem if he ends up sleeping on their sofa after deciding it’s unwise to drive.

The room is softly lit, the low lamps lending a cozy air to the already homey space. Lulled and warmed by the conversation and laughter as much as by the wine, he doesn’t think much of Bonnie’s closeness, of the way her hand lingers on his arm and her knee nudges up against his. Until suddenly there’s a beat of silence where the slide of her fingers over his skin seems to steal the breath from his lungs and his eyes catch on the curve of her lips, and Bonnie leans in and kisses him.

There’s an endless moment where it feels so natural that he doesn’t think to question it, curling a hand gently around her wrist as he kisses her back slow and soft and tender, the warmth of her body against his and the softness of her lips achingly familiar. He’s intensely aware of his own breathing as he pulls back, of the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears.

“Bonnie, what are you doing?” he asks softly.

She arches an eyebrow at him, her lips quirking. “I would have thought it was obvious.”

He pulls back a little more, at a loss for how to respond to the way she doesn’t seem to see any problem here. “You’re married,” he says. It sounds ridiculous to his own ears, to be pointing that out like it’s new information when her wedding band is glinting on her finger, but it seems like a salient point at the moment.

“Oh.” Bonnie pulls back slightly too, her expression abruptly turning apologetic. “I’m sorry, chéri. I never did explain it properly, did I.”

“Explain what?” he asks, a touch warily. Bonnie gives a slightly sheepish grin and reaches for the wine bottle to refill their glasses.

“We have…” She pauses, sipping contemplatively. “...an open marriage, I suppose, is the best thing to call it. It’s taken a little trial and error, but it really works very well.”

“An open marriage,” Sam repeats, holding tight to his wine glass like some talisman of normality. He’s half expecting someone with a camera to tumble out of a closet and declare that he’s been punk’d.

“I know it sounds strange,” Bonnie says, shrugging eloquently. “But it works for us. We trust each other enough not to let jealousy get in the way.” She gives him a wry smile, something knowing in her eyes. “And didn’t we both learn a long time ago how unreasonable it is to expect just one person to give you everything you need?”

Sam huffs an incredulous breath of a laugh. “I suppose we did at that.”

“I’ll understand if you need some time to think about it, chéri,” Bonnie says gently. “And I’ll understand if your answer is no, although I admit I’ll be a little disappointed.” She reaches out a hand to tentatively curl in around his, her smile soft and hopeful. “But if you want to, you can stay tonight.”

Sam licks his lips, willpower wavering. “What about Billy?”

“I told you, he’s spending the night with Josh and Ale.”

“But when he comes home later—”

Bonnie arches a significant eyebrow at him, her smile turning sly. “No, I think you misunderstand me. He’s _spending the night_ with them.”

The penny drops with a clatter somewhere in the back of his skull. “....oh.”

As the initial shock fades, he finds it doesn’t surprise him as much as it probably should. It’s not difficult to picture them inviting others into their lives, into their bed, with the same easy and welcoming warmth with which they’ve invited him into their home. He’s not sure he fully grasps it, but...he believes Bonnie when she says that it’s good, that it works. He can see for himself that she’s happy.

“Okay,” he says, his hand finding hers and lacing their fingers together. “Okay. Let’s give it a shot.”

Bonnie smiles, and kisses him again.

It’s been a long time. But when he has her in his arms like this, a flush on her cheeks and the taste of wine on her lips as they kiss like they have all the time in the world, years fall away. The way she shivers for it as he curls a hand into her hair is achingly familiar, the heat of her skin burning through her clothes where they’re pressed flush against each other. Her smile is so, so warm as she pulls back to search his face before taking his hand in hers and leading him upstairs.

He doesn’t have much attention to spare for the details of the setting when they spill through into the bedroom, not when Bonnie is kissing him hungrily and sliding her hands up under his shirt, all unabashed need as she rocks her hips into his. He glances up just long enough to make sure the bed’s in the direction he thinks it is before lowering his head again to taste the tender skin of Bonnie’s throat, her moan vibrating under his lips as they stumble toward the bed.

Want is thrumming urgently in his veins. But when he has Bonnie spilled out across the sheets with laughter on her lips, he finds that more than anything else he wants to savour the moment.

He presses a kiss against her stomach as he slides her shirt up; she needs no further urging to strip it off over her head, a flush already spreading temptingly over her chest under the tasteful lace of her bra. The shape of her body is familiar and strange all at once, new lines etched over the familiarity of faded scars. He recognises his own tender curiosity echoed in the way her hands slide over his skin, mapping out the differences life and age have left behind. The years have wrought a lot of changes on both of them. 

It’s like visiting a childhood neighbourhood, walking achingly familiar streets and getting lost in memories even as the eye is drawn to changed storefronts and newly built houses, to the subtle evidence of all the life lived in your absence. The details might change, but that doesn’t stop the heart from recognising an old home.

Part of him can still barely believe that this is really happening, that after all these years he’s really here like this with Bonnie again, smiling into a lingering kiss as they strip each other out of their clothes. He can’t shake the instinct to make the most of every moment just in case it’s some freak occurrence and he never gets the chance again.

It’s been a long time, but she still gives the same shiver and breathy little moan when he bites gently at the soft flesh of her inner thigh, her skin creamy pale under his hands. Her eyes are bright and her touch eager as she fumbles hastily through the nightstand to find a condom to press into his hands. He grins up at her as he sets it aside and nips again at her thigh.

Bonnie huffs. “Tease,” she accuses.

“I’m only a tease if I don’t follow through,” he corrects mildly.

“Well in that case, I eagerly await being proven wrong,” she replies, arching her eyebrows at him and giving her hips a pointed little wiggle.

He holds her eyes as he presses a kiss against the curve of her hipbone and teases at her slow and deliberate with his fingertips. She’s slick and wet already, and even in the dim light he can see the way her eyes go darker for it, the flush across her cheeks burning in deeper. Her head falls back against the sheets as she moans his name, grinding down into his touch all shameless want.

Much as he’d love to tease her until she wants to kill him, he doesn’t have it in him to pretend he’s any less desperately eager than she is. The crinkle of the condom wrapper is strangely loud in the air, Bonnie’s heartfelt groan of approval caught up on the end of it. He’s always loved how unselfconscious she is in bed, never hesitating to ask for exactly what she wants, and it would take a stronger man than he to hold back when what she wants is _him_.

She gives a soft gasp as he presses into her; her arms sliding around his shoulders and her legs wrapping around his waist, drawing him in closer against her. There’s a dazed kind of delight in her eyes, her smile soft as she looks up at him like she’s trying to memorise every single thing about this moment. He curls his fingers into her hair and kisses her slow and tender, her moan lost between their lips as he starts to rock into her.

She feels incredible, pliant and trusting in his arms as she nuzzles affectionate kisses in at his jawline, murmuring a low litany of filth and praise against his skin. He can’t stop running his hands over her body, mapping out every inch of her as though it’s the first time all over again; as though he wants to re-learn as much as he can while he still has the chance. Some part of him is still half convinced that this is going to slip through his fingers again. That’s he’s going to wake up and it’ll all have been a fleeting dream.

She comes with his name soft on her lips like a fervent prayer. He buries his face in the crook of her neck with a low groan and follows.

Afterwards, they lie curled in close together, sharing lazily affectionate touches as they catch their breath and sweat cools on their skin. Somewhere in their wanderings his hand finds hers; he raises it to his lips and brushes a soft kiss over her wedding ring.

There’s something knowing in her eyes as she laces her fingers through his; if he can recognise the disbelief of someone afraid to let themselves believe in a good thing in her sometimes, he doesn’t doubt that she can see it in him too. “We’ll talk ground rules in the morning,” she murmurs, squeezing his hand gently as she leans her forehead in against his. “I promise, mon ange, it’s going to be okay. Whatever you want, whatever you don’t, we’ll talk about it.”

“It seems too good to be true,” he says, his arm tightening around her a little.

She gives him a wry quirk of a smile. “Believe me, I know the feeling.” She kisses him again, a fleeting brush of lips. “Trust me, chéri. You know I wouldn’t lie to you about something this important.”

“I do,” he replies simply. Even when they were at their lowest, he’s always trusted her, especially in this. She’s a romantic at heart. It’s not in her nature to be careless with a lover.

Even is some wary part of him is still half convinced this is all going to fall apart on them in the cold light of morning, it would be worth it just for this; just for another chance to get to fall asleep with her in his arms, lulled by the beat of her heart and the soft rhythm of her breathing. It’s good. Even if it’s only for tonight, it’s good.

At some point in the night, he half wakes to her stirring against him, breath gone ragged as she mumbles something indecipherable. It’s been a long time, but even mostly asleep he instinctively recognises the shape of old nightmares. He curls in closer around her, holding her tight and nuzzling gently into her hair as he murmurs soothing nonsense. She doesn’t wake, but she seems to relax in against him just a little.

He doesn’t remember drifting off again, but at some point he must. He wakes to bright morning light spilling in through a gap in the curtains, cutting a golden shaft in which motes of dust dance through the still air, and an empty bed.

He stares blankly at the space beside him for a long moment before reaching out to press a hand to the sheets. They’re still warm. He sits up, but before he can read too much into the situation or form any further plan of action, the floorboards in the hallway creak and the bedroom door swings open.

“Oh good, you’re awake,” Bonnie says, smiling warmly at him as she pads barefoot into the room, clad only in an oversized tshirt that falls to mid-thigh. There’s a mug in each of her hands, the scent of fresh coffee wafting tantalisingly into the air. She leans in to press a soft kiss against his lips before handing him one, and settling back onto the bed with the other cradled between her palms. She looks quite lovely with her hair askew and whatever makeup she’d been wearing the night before faded off, drawing her knees up and leaning her shoulder in against his as she sips at her coffee

“Wasn’t sure what to think when I woke up and you weren’t here,” he admits, raising his own mug to his lips.

“It’s my own house, chéri,” she replies, arching an eyebrow at him. “I don’t think the morning after hasty retreat works so well when you have to come back eventually.” She lowers her head and drops a kiss against the bare skin of his shoulder. “I hope in future you’ll default to assuming I’m making you coffee.”

“I’ll try and keep it in mind,” he agrees amiably. He considers her for a moment as he takes a long drink. “You still wanna fill me in on how this all works?”

Bonnie sips delicately at her coffee. “I’d rather hoped it’d be less filling in, and more discussing and deciding how we _want_ it to work,” she says. “There are a few ground rules in place already that I wouldn’t want to compromise, of course, but apart from that it’s mostly a matter of figuring out what works best for us.”

“What kind of ground rules?” he asks.

“Well, we’re quite strict about being safe,” she replies matter of factly. “We all get tested regularly, and I take care of my own birth control, so condoms are usually more a matter of personal preference than necessity. If you’d rather go without, we’d want you to get tested too.”

Sam considers this for a moment. “That sounds reasonable enough,” he concedes. “Anything else?”

“Apart from that...just honesty, really,” Bonnie says with a shrug. “The more open we are with each other, the simpler this is, especially now in the beginning. If you aren’t entirely comfortable with something, say so. We’ll talk about it.”

“...it can’t be that easy.” Part of him is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Bonnie laughs. “Of course it isn’t easy, cher. Relationships never are, you know that. The scheduling alone is an art form.” She smiles at him, her eyes softening as she takes in his face. “It’s worth it though.”

He looks at her, at the smile on her face and the warmth in her eyes, the way the tired lines of old hurt and grief have been slowly displaced by laughter lines; at how totally at ease she seems here in her home with people she loves. She looks happy.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I believe it.”


	14. Round Five - Trading Favors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Round Five - Trading Favors - written by ThrillingDetectiveTales
> 
> I don't have a board for this yet but fuck it, it's done and that's honestly more than I was expecting out of this round.
> 
> Disclaiming up top that every trans person's experience is different, and I made choices on Josh's behalf in the following fic that may not ring true for everyone and that's okay. I hope you enjoy it even so~

When Aleja came, it was with a moan that sounded ripped straight off of a porn set and a violent shudder, thighs clenching sweetly on either side of Josh’s head while her fingers tightened in his hair. He licked into her still, coaxing her through the trembling aftershocks and savoring the slick rush over his tongue while she whimpered and moaned. He crooked his fingers carefully, gentling the motions of his thumb where he was circling her clit in time with the chorus of little, keening sobs up above him. After a long second the perfect, taut line of her body slowly unspooled as she sank back into the mattress, loose and easy in the way he’d only ever seen her in the moments immediately after an orgasm.

He slid his fingers out of her, slow and careful, grinning a little as he darted a quick, teasing flick of his tongue into her again, shallow and teasing, and was rewarded when she made a muted noise of discontent and tugged sharply on his hair.

“Déjalo,” she chided, voice husky and low. Josh nosed at her one more time, just a bare brush of his lips over the slick heat of her, and Aleja tugged a little harder, muttering warningly, _“Guero.”_

Josh grinned and turned his head to press a kiss to the soft expanse of skin along the inside of her thigh, trailing a few of them in a line up toward the elegant curve of her hip. She tugged again and he followed her motion, climbing a little awkwardly up her body to collapse half on top of her and tilting his head to meet her when she pulled him in for a kiss.

His face was still wet, sticky with her spend, but he had learned pretty early on that Aleja didn’t much mind the inherent messiness of sex, which was yet another point in her favor on the long, long list that Josh had been compiling for months detailing precisely why she was the perfect woman. She bit at his lip and chased the taste of herself past his teeth, curling her tongue in that way that always made him moan before he could help himself.

If someone had told him nearly a month ago now that he would regularly be seeing the hot librarian he’d been panting after all semester laid out, bare-skinned and glorious against his sheets, Josh would have laughed so hard he fell over and maybe thrown a punch for good measure. And yet, here she was, all summer-brown limbs and sweet floral perfume, arms wrapped around him while she kissed him deep and slow and wanting. She shifted beneath him and pressed her thigh up between his legs with a playful little smirk.

Josh still had his briefs on, but even so the gentle pressure against his dick made want ricochet sharp and bright up his spine. He couldn’t quite bite back a soft, desperate breath that had Aleja grinning up at him like the cat that got the cream. She rocked her leg slowly back and forth, just the barest motion, and that same dazzling heat sparked all up through Josh’s abdomen.

“Fuck,” he breathed, and ducked his head to her collarbone, pressing his teeth to a small, purpling mark that he’d left there earlier while Aleja cupped her palm around his neck, slid her fingers up into the sweat-damp curls at the back of his head. She tilted her head and pressed a kiss to Josh’s temple, running her other hand in a soothing stroke along his arm. She shifted her leg up again and Josh whined, hoarse, and turned his face to bite at her lip, sinking into a breathless kiss and rocking his hips a little despite his best efforts to keep still.

“You going to let me help you out with that, guero?” she asked when he pulled back far enough for her to speak, voice low and teasing and laden with promise.

Josh hummed thoughtfully and bumped their noses together, flushing a little at the way Aleja’s grin sharpened, gaze going liquid hot, when he asked, “What did you have in mind?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Josh only hesitated for a beat, but even that was enough to make Aleja’s expression soften, warm eyes all aglow with affection while her smirk tilted, lush and sweet and reassuring. She shifted her hand so that it was curled around his cheek and brought the other up to join it, ran her thumb along the scruffy-edged blade of his jaw, and kissed him again, gentle and lingering.

Josh couldn't quite help the way he melted into it. Aleja seemed to have an inherent knack for getting under his skin in all the best ways, riling him up on occasion because they both delighted in the way their sharper edges caught, gentling his temper and soothing him back down at times when his anger was balanced on a hair trigger and a bare breath from ignition.

They’d been sleeping together for weeks, he reminded himself as he sighed into the kiss. She already knew what kind of equipment he was working with and had never seemed less than enthused about it, bringing him off with her hands or straddling his hips and riding him into nirvana. Or, on one memorable occasion, letting him rut against her thigh like a horny teenager while he got his hands up under her skirt deep in the stacks while she was on-shift one night, both of them keyed up and biting at each other’s mouths to keep quiet.

“We don’t have to,” Aleja murmured against his mouth.

Josh kissed her again, deep and intent, all of the want and affection tangled up hot in his chest seeping into his smile when he breathed, “No, it’s good. I’m game.”

Aleja’s grin was positively sinful as she instructed him to lie down.

Josh obediently rolled over onto his back, settling in against the faint impression of heat that Aleja had left while she shifted up to kneel beside him, hooking her fingers under the waistband of his briefs and tugging them down. Josh made a low, grunting noise in the back of his throat when her fingers skimmed over him, dick twitching desperately at the heat of her hands so near, but not quite close enough to touch.

She cut him a sly grin, all banked heat and affection, and said teasingly, “Be patient, cariño. I promise to make it worth the wait.”

She dropped his underwear off the side of the bed without ceremony and then shifted to straddle his hips one hand coming to rest gently at the center of his chest while she curled the other around his jaw, sliding her fingers up into his hair and leaning in for another kiss. She bit at Josh’s lip the way she knew he liked, just hard enough that it stung, and rocked her hips down against him.

Later, Josh might be embarrassed about the helpless whimper that ripped its way out of his throat when his cock slotted in against the slick heat of her, dragging perfect and maddening along the shallow valley between her thighs. He rutted up against her, sparks jumping from low in his belly to ricochet up his spine as Aleja kissed him again, slow and deep and claiming, tugging at his hair just this side of too hard.

They lay like that for a few long minutes, rocking together until Josh felt lit up from the inside, whole body alive like a firework, breath coming in soft, desperate gasps between possessive sweeps of Aleja’s tongue. He was so close, and Aleja must have known from the subtle tremor starting to rise all through his body, from the way he held her tighter, pulled her closer, because she sat back up despite the deeply pitiful way that Josh whined, drawing up onto her knees so that she was looking down on him like a goddess on an offering, flushed and clever and beautiful above him while he tried to catch his breath.

“What - ” he started, and Aleja grinned at him, pressed her palm to his chest and dragged her thumb across a nipple, smile sharpening when he moaned.

“I told you I had a surprise, remember?” she said, ducking her head to trail a row of searing kisses down Josh’s sternum. She moved down the bed as she did, adjusting her position and mapping the expanse of Josh’s abdomen as she shifted so that she was kneeling between his thighs.

“Oh, fuck,” Josh breathed, legs falling a little further open on instinct ashe realized belatedly what her plan was. “You don't gotta - ” he started, but Aleja cut him off with a sharp nip to his hip that made him suck a breath past his teeth, want unspooling in his belly and dripping down to the bright pit of heat between his thighs.

“What if I want to?” she asked teasingly, eyes glittering dark as she tilted her face to look up at him. She let her thumb drag along his dick, light and slow and sensuous, and Josh moaned before he could help himself. 

He let his head fall back against the pillows, fingers tightening in the sheets for a second as he said with ease he didn't quite feel, “Well, if you _want_ to.”

She huffed a soft laugh, little gust of heat curling over his hip, and ran her thumb along the length of him again before curling her palm over his thigh.

“Only if _you_ want it, too, guero,” she said gently. She tilted her head, gaze curious and glittering with amusement beyond the curtain of her glossy curls. “So? ¿Qué dices?”

Josh licked his lips, mouth gone dry, desire coiling in a searing corkscrew in his belly. He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked down the bare line of his body to where she was watching him with those dark, hooded eyes, waiting patiently for him to give his consent. She ducked her head to press a little kiss to the arc of his hip, mouth hot, sleek curls falling in soft waves to coil against his skin.

“Yeah,” Josh breathed, hoarse and already halfway to desperate. He’d known his answer before she even asked. He had the taste of her lingering on his tongue, the scent of her still heady and sweet every time he breathed, and here she was, all radiance and poise, offering to return the favor. “Yeah, _fuck_ , I want to.”

The curve of her grin was sharp and luscious when she smiled up at him. She ducked her head again and trailed a little row of searing kisses down toward the crease of his thigh, murmuring softly as she went, “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

Josh couldn’t quite manage anything being a dazed nod, but Aleja didn’t seem to mind, curling those elegant fingers around his thighs on either side and pressing a kiss so low to the plane of his belly that it was infuriating, the heat of her mouth just too far away for Josh to rock up into like he so desperately wanted.

She hovered over him for a second, lips lush and soft and swollen pink while she grinned, until Josh breathed, hoarse and desperate, “Please.”

She ducked her head and brought her mouth to him, and Josh’s entire frame rattled with the white hot bolt of want that blazed through him. Her tongue was warm and wet, gliding in a little flirting stroke along the underside of his shaft, but it was nothing on the slick heat as her lips closed over him. Josh moaned, cock twitching in the wet warmth as Aleja swirled her tongue around it, even the gentle suction maddening when he was already so keyed up he thought he might see stars if he closed his eyes. Not that he thought for a second he would be able to pull his eyes away from the spectacle of Aleja’s dark head bowed between his thighs, hips rocking gently while he fucked into the slick, hot drag of her mouth all around him. They hadn’t done this before, though Josh would have been a liar of the highest order if he said he’d never thought about it, and the reality was so far beyond what he’d been able to conjure in his imagination that it couldn't even begin to compare.

He whimpered when she ran the soft pad of a finger along the seam of him, catching on a bead of wetness and making something pulse, warm and wanting, deep in his belly. Josh had never been especially good at giving himself over in intimate moments, but something about the way that Aleja touched him, the way that she looked at him with the fond and fathomless gaze, pushed Josh past an egde he hadn’t known he could survive stumbling beyond. She knew exactly how to prod and poke and tease to get him there, chest and face and shoulders gone hot and pink, spread out wantonly for her and wet in the way he rarely got anymore. He fell back against the mattress, arms shaking too much to hold himself up, white heat coiled up in a tight knot at the base of his spine.

“Fuck,” he moaned, rolling his hips up in time with the elegant bob of Aleja’s head, chasing the velvet glide of her lips around him as she pressed a finger shallowly into him. “Fuck, babe, please.”

He twisted his fists in the soft jersey sheets, hitching little, desperate breaths as Aleja hummed a thoughtful sound around him and fucked into him deeper. He wasn’t rightly aware that he was gasping, “please” and “more” until Aleja swirled her tongue around him again, sliding a second finger carefully in alongside the first and fucking into him deep and slow and eased by his own slick.

Josh could feel the heat wound around his spine starting to build and crest, and he bucked up, chasing it, clenching desperately around Aleja’s fingers, cock twitching hot against her tongue as his own orgasm rolled over him in a wave. He came with a shout, shaking and gasping as Aleja coaxed him gently through it, all the heat in him seeping out so that he felt weak and content and vaguely melted.

He was distantly aware of Aleja pulling her fingers back, the disconcerting moment of emptiness that came with it, and then dropping little, careful kisses to his thigh and his belly as she made her way up to lie next to him, looking entirely too satisfied when Josh just turned his hazy gaze to her and pulled her in for a kiss.

“Fuck, babe,” he sighed when they’d both had their fill, kisses turned lazy and affectionate under the warmth of the afterglow.

“You liked it?” Aleja asked, a little shyly, though from the knowing gleam in her eye and the smug curl of her mouth it was something of an affected air. Josh grunted and rolled onto his side, pulling her in close so that he could press a kiss the soft corner of her lush mouth, her chin, nuzzle his bearded cheek against the sleek column if her throat.

“You’re damn right I did,” he murmured, belly swooping a little at the dazzling way that Aleja grinned, slung a leg over his hip and tucked herself up against his chest. “ _Goddamn_ , darlin’,” he breathed approvingly, running a hand absently through her hair and thrilling at the soft, contented little noises that Aleja made.

She closed her eyes and patted absently at his shoulder.

“I think this is the part where we take a nap and then go for round two,” she said serenely. Josh pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“That sounds like a plan,” he agreed easily.

There was a sudden, jarring series of thuds against the wall above their heads, three in a row, rapidfire, and a familiar, muted voice crowing approvingly from the next room over, “That’s my boy!”

Aleja huffed a little laugh into Josh’s shoulder and rapped her knuckles gently against his collarbone in time with his answering series of knocks against the wall.

“Tell Brody I did the hard part,” she mumbled drowsily. Josh settled down beside her, pulling her in close and tugging the blanket up over them both.

“We’ll tell him later,” he promised, sinking into the gentle heat of her body against his while she made a soft, agreeable noise in response, already lost to sleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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